Connection
by Ihsan997
Summary: After decades of living on the road, a lone adventurer seeks out a stranger with a distant connection. With not a soul in the world close to her, she discovers more than she bargained for when the two of them finally come face to face. F x M troll/nelf hybrids. Set in the far future of Azeroth; very AU. 10 chapters
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: hello, readers! Welcome to volume three of seven in a thread I like to call the Saga of Sharimara. Like all other stories in the series, you DO NOT need to read my other stories in order to understand this one. All context is given in the narrative itself and the paragraph below. Of course, I would like it if you read my other stories too, but I won't force you to do so.**

**This story takes place in the year 167 on the Warcraft timeline - for reference, the WoD expansion was in the year 31. This is Azeroth over a century in the future, where the events of the current games are just blips in the history books. And, a note...the ending to this story is realistic. I didn't say it's a bad ending; it's just realistic in regard to the continuum with the remaining four volumes.**

The day was oddly calm in the swamp that day. Dustwallow Marsh wasn't necessarily known as a stormy place, though it was certainly never without its fair share of...other disturbances. It was a dangerous place, a violent place, a place where people went in and didn't come out. Dark green plant life that was such a dull shade that it almost looked grey punctuated the rare clearing in the midst of the humid, subtropical marshland. And so far away from any signs of civilization, a space that wasn't simply full of jutting bushes, cypress knees, gnarled roots or impenetrable vines was indeed a rare sight to see.

The sky wasn't visible above even though it couldn't have been later than six in the late afternoon. At least, that's about the time Sharimara guessed it was when she regained consciousness. It was difficult to tell so far from any signs of intelligent life; the nearest beaten path had to be a good hour, and the nearest paved road was more than half a day without taking breaks. The small break on the ground beneath the low, wispy canopy of the marshland had to be the only uncovered space for many miles; around that area, there didn't even seem to be any more predators lurking around. Isolated and forgotten, she found herself in what she guessed was one of those few places that one could accurately describe as 'the ends of the planet.'

Surveying herself for any damage was the first order of business. A warden often found herself in tricky situations; such were the demands laid upon Azeroth's most elite commandos by those who hired them. Whether it be sneaking into an outlaw citadel or tracking down an unbound elemental, their kind were usually sent in to worst case scenarios knowing full well what the risks were. That was their job: taking those risks and relying on quick thinking first, fast blades second.

How embarrassing it was, then, that after all she'd survived professional, the first time she had truly been caught was while she was off duty on a wild goose chase of more personal nature.

Her head was still hazy from the initial shock that had coursed through her veins when she sprung the trap. Although there was no pain, her entire body felt drained, as if she'd had her life force sucked away and it was only just then beginning to return to her. A short breeze wafted through the long, leafy branches of the cypress trees and then left before she could actually enjoy the way it tickled her long, batlike ears. Her only possibility of calming down from her ordeal robbed from her, she was faced again with the daunting challenge of hanging upside down from the highest tree in the area while completely sapped of her mana.

If she strained her neck, she could look upward to see the runes of disenchantment etched into the snare she'd stepped in to. They had obviously been designed by a mage, while the snare had obviously been designed by a trapper; no single person was likely to have manufactured the contraption on their own.

She cursed herself once for having stepped into the trap...by the goddess, she was a warden for crying out loud. She was the one who was supposed to sneak up on her prey and whisk them away into the night unseen; she was supposed to be the ever alert watcher who could never be surprised or ambushed.

She cursed herself a second time when she felt how much the manaburn stung; she had developed anti-magic abilities herself as part of her training over a century before. She shouldn't have been so foolish to rely on her blink spell so much to escape from traps, considering the fact that depriving people of their own magic and watching them squirm in confusion was one of her favorite tactics.

"Stupid...stupid...stupid," she muttered to herself as she slowly swung back and forth by her ankle, dangling a good ten feet above the ground.

Technically, it wasn't that far down; being half jungle troll, Sharimara was quite tall. In fact, there were full blooded troll women shorter than her. The distance to the ground wasn't that great, and the heavy plate armor she wore didn't encumber her that much. And seeing as how she was also half night elf, she was nimble enough to have normally twisted out of such a trap, and perhaps even back flipped on the way down. The manaburn impeded all of that, however; whoever had etched those runes wasn't intending them to simply take down a novice of any class. When she'd triggered the snare during her search, the force hadn't caused her to slam in to any of the tree trunks or even shaken her particularly hard; regardless, she'd passed out quickly and must have been out cold for almost fifteen minutes. No...the trap was intended for a serious, rather dangerous target.

Who, then, was it meant for? Obviously not her. Her own target was most likely the one who had set the trap...and he had no idea she was looking for him.

Her mother's people were quite meticulous about recording genealogies. And why not be? They had been immortal once, and birth was such a rare occurrence that it was a cause for celebration; it was quite unlike his father's people, who often produced seven or eight children per mother. No, the Kaldorei filled tomes with lists of 'begets' whereas the Darkspear tended to forget quickly. Thus, it was quite peculiar when, in the summer of the year 164, Sharimara found a blank spot in the official records of her mother's ancestral grove.

She could almost hear the voice of the archivist at the Sanctuar of Malorne on Mount Hyjal. The old man was one of the last few living night elves who was over a millennia old - nowhere near as old as Sharimara's mother had been, but ancient enough to have read every family record at the holy city of a hundred libraries (most of which were quite small).

"Serenity Grove, eh? Most of our people lived in small hamlets of that nature during the Long Vigil. Nobody has touched this record for a long time; so many of those countless little villages either expanded and were absorbed into larger towns, or ceased to exist."

There was an almost calm sense in the marsh as Sharimara found the dizziness leaving from her head. As she waited for her energy to return there in the clearing, she could imagine the feeling of clutching the ancient book in her hands again.

So many grandchildren from a grove that had been occupied by only twenty five immortal women for ten thousand years...the sheer number of great grandchildren was mind boggling. Night elven population exploded after immortality ended and the older generations began dying off; men had returned from their slumber and their society approached some vestige of normalcy again. Jungle trolls, of course, would always remain more numerous, but they were disparate and disunited; the laziness and disorganization of trolls were their own worst enemies. Elves of all types, on the other hand, were masters of accuracy and detail.

How curious it was, then, when Sharimara found a blank page in the genealogy. Ever dutiful in memorizing the bloodlines traced through the mothers in their matriarchal society, the old librarian at Hyjal had been ready with an answer. "A missing link in your mother's ancestral grove," he'd said enthusiastically, as if her attempt to piece together the shattered mess that was once her personal life was some sort of pet project. "Everybody stayed in touch except for one."

Tirith Nightshade. The fabled twenty fifth woman from Serenity who hadn't kept in touch with anybody. She had been the same age as Sharimara's mother, the same class, and had married a jungle troll as well. And other than that...nothing was known.

For three years, Sharimara checked around. Her attempts were subtle at first; even after the post immortality baby boom, night elves weren't one of the more numerous races on Azeroth. Everybody talked, everybody knew your cousin, or was your cousin somehow, and word spread fast. For many, many decades, Sharimara had been the self designated black sheep of her family; while they'd been so tight knit when her parents were alive, she'd been unable to relate any more after the pain of their relatively comfortable, natural deaths. Cut off from her roots, the research into her background had been an attempt to scratch an itch at first. An empty part of her life that needed to be filled somehow.

But she had to go about it quietly. For sure, whenever she visited the various archives and record keeping centers, complete strangers would soon know her name and why she'd been there; for a people who supposedly valued restraint and conservatism, her mother's race were notorious gossips. All her family members lived in the Barrens, Ashenvale or Teldrassil, three regions right next to each other. Traveling through was the bane of her existence lest she bump into any of them and be forced to explain why the Horde had seen seven warchiefs rise and fall since the last time she'd visited the home she'd grown up in. There was also the off chance that they might also be visiting Hyjal or Silithus or any other traditional Kaldorei territory at the same time she took vacations from her violent profession to perform more research, but after early a hundred years away from home, that was at least one disparate risk she could take.

And so for three years, she searched. She read. She asked around. She traveled. Libraries, consulates, hospitals, even the embarrassing yet booming business of Kaldorei matchmakers were all on her list for learning who this missing son of Serenity was and why he was the only grandchild aside from herself who never attended the annual picnic where they would all meet at Raynewood Retreat and pretend to know each other.

And during those three years, the loneliness brought by her profession suddenly hurt less. For a hundred years she'd lived from job to job, quest to quest, inn to inn, risking her life for people she cared nothing for personally and committing acts of paid murder just to eat. Sure, her targets were (mostly) scumbags and criminals who deserved it, but eventually the decades of killing for a living wore on one's soul. Thus, when the socially awkward woman walked into that archive on Mount Hyjal for the first time, her usual sheepishness about showing her wants and desires to other people melted away with surprising ease.

"Seems like you have quite the mystery there," the old librarian had told her. "We rarely lose track of one of our own, unless they fall to fel corruption or a life of crime. But we don't have any record of the son of Nightshade as being an outlaw, either. You've stumbled upon the rare instance of a man who really just doesn't want to be found."

Doesn't want to be found.

Doesn't want to be found.

Doesn't want to be found.

The contradiction in her behavior had been apparent immediately, but too much time spent alone had pushed her beyond the point of shame. She'd spent most of her life - numerically speaking - trying not to be found by a family who loved her dearly. She identified with this man without even knowing him, and there she was spending every vacation she took from her work trying to violate his privacy and end the quiet life that she actually envied.

But she was far beyond driven...too much time spent alone did that to a person. And even when she was hanging above a clearing, miles from anybody who could help her and stuck without even a hearthstone, she didn't regret her actions. Of course, she'd feel shy to discuss them with other people, but she couldn't gauge whether that was due to her lack of social grace or because her behavior actually was inappropriate. When your only interaction with other people tended to be capturing or killing them, or collecting money from a person paying for their capture or killing, you often lost that sense of what was and wasn't socially appropriate.

Sharimara sighed and facepalmed despite the fact that she was hanging upside down by her ankle. "Am I a stalker?" she asked out loud rhetorically.

The lazy cypress trees hung with their branches dragging on the ground. The entire marsh seemed too drab and tired to even bother inspiring her with a metaphorical answer.

"Yeah...probably."

Rotating her head, she tried to figure out what to do now that she didn't feel as disoriented as before. Her mana pool was still shallow and drained; she couldn't use the blink spell common to wardens in order to teleport out, and still felt too tired to attempt to cut the snare. It was as if her energy hit a plateau and wouldn't recover behind a certain level as long as the enchanted trap bound her. Not surprising, considering what she'd heard about the profession of the one she was stalking...er, researching.

Those three years hadn't been spent on nonstop research, of course. Duty called, and she was no stranger to spur of the moment rides via land, air or sea when the next highest bidder came calling. That's part of why it had taken her so long: she'd always been one step behind his trail before. And there, in that clearing, just as she felt she'd seen his broad, heavy footsteps for the first time...she stepped directly into a trap that wasn't even intended for her in the first place.

Frustration mounting, she looked up at her ankle. The blood was rushing to her head, which she found extremely uncomfortable. "Might as well try," she mumbled to herself while crunching her abs and grabbing a hold of her boot.

It was quite the workout on unnaturally depleted energy reserves, but she held on for quite a few minutes as the blood in her head flowed back down into her body. Though it still wasn't a comfortable position, it allowed her to breathe a little easier and feel less anxious about her face turning an even brighter hue of violet-blue.

And that's when she heard him.

Being a warden, she was accustomed to detection of potential adversaries. This, however, was no adversary; of that, she was immediately sure. Far off in the distance metal boots like hers thudded against the soil unstealthily. It was clear that she'd been spotted, and he even stopped for a moment to watch. He was behind her, in the worst possible spot and outside of her field of vision even if she'd wanted to continue crunching herself into a pretzel. Which she didn't.

Sighing and letting herself fall again in resignation, she dangled from the snare and closed her eyes for a moment as more bushes rustled and branches snapped. This man was large, heavy and had the kind of presence that would probably fill an entire room when off duty. There was purpose in his pace, but it wasn't hostile, and she'd been in enough encounters in the wilderness to know when a person was or wasn't looking for a fight. What she sensed from this man was a similar curious irritation to what she was already feeling. The irony was overwhelming.

Eventually the footsteps reached the edge of the clearing, though her sense of dignity prevented her from being the first one to speak. He examined her for a moment, and even though she was in a full set of armor, she felt a little exposed having someone stare at her as she hung upside down from a tree. His breathing was heavy, but not from exercise, as if he just sported a very powerful set of lungs; it reminded her of her father, in a way.

Very faintly, his scent met her nostrils. It was like humidity and earth mixed with musk, a leather jerkin worn under metal armor and sweat. Not too much sweat to where it came off as dirty; it seemed more like he'd simply been hiking for the same amount of time she had in the wilderness. Similar to how she probably smelled at that point, but male. She indulged in the smell a little more than she would ever admit to anybody, and didn't feel quite as bad as she might otherwise since he seemed to be taking his time looking her over.

Though he didn't growl, he did snort through his nose in a way that signaled his disapproval; she obviously wasn't what he'd been trying to catch. On the other hand, he was exactly what she'd been tracking down; and now that their paths had finally crossed, after three years of looking...she had absolutely no idea what to say.

Awkward panic increased inside of her as he set an object down against a tree behind her. He signed, at ease despite the fact that an armed and armored person was caught in his trap in a swamp, but he made no move to approach her just yet. Why the hell wouldn't he just break the silence for them both?

After a few more agonizing seconds, the mystery man and only other misfit among the descendants of Serenity Grove walked back over to her, though standing conveniently out of striking distance were she to try and grab ahold of him. The whole situation was frustrating to no end, and she could tell from the lightly exasperated tone of the deep, baritone voice speaking fluent Zandali that he felt exactly the same as she did.

"Alright...do you mind explaining to me why you're caught in my trap?"


	2. Chapter 2

To call the silence that ensued a battle of wills would have been inaccurate. As much as she wanted to engage in one, her natural instinct to come out of every uncomfortable exchange swinging was extinguished by the man's demeanor. Not in his tone of voice, nor in the relaxed shift of his weight, nor in the plain words he used did she detect any sort of challenge or any real attempt to engage in a competition. It was a simple, unassuming and even fair question...and it completely disarmed her.

Digging deep into her mind, she tried to think of possible answers to the question, but none of them seemed sufficient and she worried that she was overanalyzing the situation. What exactly could she tell him?

I've been spying on you and was trying to find you even though you have no idea who I am?

I've been trying to find personal information about you and your deceased parents because I felt so lost after the deaths of my own?

I've been searching for you for three years, and stepped into your trap while following you through the woods?

At a loss, she found herself unable to formulate a cogent response in time, and sufficed herself with silence while he reiterated his question.

"Do you mind telling me why you're caught in my trap?" he asked again, this time switching to Common.

Despite having already asked the question once, he didn't sound as if he'd become more irritated. That projection of dignified calm even when he did seem as frustrated as she was could still be detected. The cadence of his speech was soothing even when he was clearly unhappy, and in an odd way, listening to him talk helped her relax a little.

Sighing outwardly and immediately cursing herself for it, she tried to answer with the first line that came to her mind.

"Because I stepped on it," she replied in Darnassian.

Stupid, she thought to herself quietly.

Snorting again through his nose, the man stepped back and began to circle around her. From the corner of her eye, she could roundly make out his outline; he wasn't inspecting her anymore so much as he was weary of stepping too close to a stranger in the woods. A wise choice on his part, but it still didn't do anything to solve her predicament.

To her side, she got her first glimpse of part of him. Metal armor covered his legs and one arm, leaving his thighs uncovered. Goddess...she looked away, not wanting him to notice the way she'd admired his thick quadriceps for a few fleeting moments. His hide was lavender, a common complexion among both Kaldorei and Darkspear, only further confirming that after three years of searching, she'd found the right man; interracial marriage was more common than in the past, but it was still rare; there couldn't be that many half elf, half troll trappers working in Dustwallow Marsh.

Perhaps not even realizing it, he began to speak in Darnassian as well, easily code switching between the trio of languages they seemed to share. "Well, it's obvious that you stepped on it," he replied in an unassuming voice. The calming effect of the way he talked almost lulled her into relaxing even more as she dangled, though logic forced her to remember her situation. "What are you...on your first quest after the academy or something?" he asked sincerely.

And right then and there, the combination of frustration, comfort and mild arousal was mixed with a sharp sense of offense. She wore armor blessed by the moon in the traditional style of the watchers and jailers in night elven lands. She was not a novice by any means, and he had to have known that. Her heart thumped in her chest as her desire to shout and flail crashed against the distraction caused when her eyes kept returning to those bare, muscular thighs. In the end, a sort of compromise was made internally, yielding what she knew was a poor result.

"That's disrespectful," she growled at him in one of the three languages, though her immediate sense of sheepish regret was so heavy that she wasn't sure which language she'd used.

At first, she expected him to react in kind, maybe taunt her or make some pithy comment about her situation. It was within his right; she'd spoken based on her rising sense of embarrassment at having been caught so easily, and anxiety coursed through her veins. For three long years, she'd been carefully reading and planning to meet the only other long lost child of Serenity. Was she really going to lose all that work, and simply return to her lonely, pointless existence due to her own thorny defense mechanism?

Thus, she couldn't have been more surprised when he let the comment roll off of him.

"Forgive my assumption," he replied sincerely though not too apologetically; he wasn't actually seeking her forgiveness so much as he seemed to be offering an olive branch. He was more magnanimous than she would have been considering the fact that she was stuck in his trap.

He walked around near the front of her field of vision, and she finally got a better look at him. A leather skirt bound by a metal girdle protected his midsection, but a near perfect set of abs lied exposed above. Not the sort of ripped, slender abs of a runner; this was more like the midsection of a man who could take a punch without losing his breath. Her focus began to slip again when she tried to find something else to look at, instead meeting the upside down visage of a face half concealed in the shadows cast by the willow trees. All she could tell - and it was very, very easy to tell - was that he was biracial. Both elven and trollish features punctuated the half of his face that wasn't entirely hidden, though it would have been difficult to point out which was which. Medium blue hair tied in a ponytail was most definitely fine and elven, which clashed with the man's size; even when upside down, she could tell he was almost the size of a full blooded troll, somewhat similar to her.

Unable to look at him without becoming distracted, she shut her eyes as he spoke. "I'm going to release you from the trap now; if you try anything funny, then you know what will happen," he stated while gripping the object he'd previously laid down - a twelve foot long catch pole - in an apparent warning. "Do you understand?"

"Just get me down from here," she groaned, not wanting to endure the embarrassment any longer.

Grunting and displaying little wariness of her potential ability to strike even when she was hanging from a tree, the man moved to her left side and began the release process.

Humiliation that she hoped he couldn't sense welled up within her mind. That he didn't seem afraid of her stung hard, amplifying the bruise that her inability to work her way free had inflicted upon her ego. The proximity of his exposed skin so close to her unguarded left side - even if she was wearing her armor, she would have experienced one hell of s difficult time trying to parry a blow - unsettled her in more ways than one. That closeness, the way her own greave tickled her ankle when he gripped it to work her boot out of the snare, the way she felt her nostrils subconsciously flaring to take in more of his scent...it all bothered her. She'd let herself get caught, failed to offer any meaningful retort to an embarrassing question and was relying on a stranger for help for the first time in many long years. If he'd rubbed it in, it almost would have been easier to accept than his almost polite excusing of her sharp attitude.

Without warning, he let go of her ankle and let her fall. Much more clumsily than she ever thought possible for herself, her reaction was delayed and she hit the soft, moist ground in a heap. At least he gave her the space she needed to collect herself; hanging upside down even for less than an hour like she'd been was disorienting, and when she rolled into a sitting position, she shut her eyes due to the return of the dizziness. Although it wasn't as smooth as leaping to her feet and pretending that nothing had happened would have been, there was a measure more of dignity to sitting than to dangling, and she self consciously pulled one knee to her chest to let her arm balance on it and attempted to look relaxed, like a runner who had just finished a marathon.

A pose...loa, she was almost one hundred and thirty years old. Why was she striking a pose in front of someone? Why did she care?

Though she pretended to keep her eyes closed, she was still watching him through her narrowed slits. He remained in her field of vision as he tugged on the snare rhythmically, pulling it down from the tree. The other end was what bore the runes, and aside from that the trap seemed altogether normal and mundane. As he wrapped it up in an apparent signal that he wouldn't be setting it up in that spot again, he spoke casually despite the fact that he didn't know who she was.

"You're awfully far from the nearest town," he said in Darnassian while he collected his trap in some sort of burlap sack. His posture was upright like an elf's, but he was the size of a troll...Sharimara was taller than two of her brothers, and wasn't dainty by any means, but this man was almost as big as her father had been. He didn't seem to notice her staring at him intently and just continued. "I'm sure you'll be able to find whatever quest giver sent you out here back at New Theramore; you're maybe only half a day away if you skip the road, which meanders-"

"I am not some noob stuck on a quest."

The retort had come out involuntarily, and surprised even her. A warden was supposed to be calm and collected, and she could bring multiple witnesses to testify that in fifty years, she'd only lost her temper while on the job twice. She'd lost her temper in personal matters as well, she had to confess, but her two failed marriages had lasted less than two decades when combined; those periods were not indicative of the other thirteen decades of her life.

So why exactly she'd responded so defensively, and so acidicly, was beyond her. This was not turning out well at all.

For a brief second, she tilted her head up to get a better look at him. Only the side of his body was visible, and the billowing canopy still cast shade on part of him. He'd begun tying his hair back a little more tightly in a way that revealed more of his midriff, though this time she had an easier time fighting off the distraction when she noticed the way he glared at her. Glowing silver eyes like a night elf's shone through slits as he narrowed his eyelids like she had, though his relatively thin lips - more like an elf's - were pressed into a frown. A nose that was a little bit too short to be that of a full blooded troll but would never have passed for an elven nose in a thousand years scrunched up in disappointment. Had circumstances been different, she'd almost have been ready to ask permission to draw him.

But when his helmet came down after his offended expression had turned away from her, she realized her blunder. Unlike her helmet, his covered all of his face instead of half of it, leaving only his slender, elf like ears and the back of his thick neck exposed. It was impossible to gauge his feelings exactly without being able to see his face, but she could tell that he wasn't happy.

And just like that, three years of work that had kept her balanced and mentally occupied throughout all the long, lonely grinds of inn after inn, wanted poster after wanted poster, began to walk away.

He seemed so nonchalant about it that she was almost confused as to why he was so upset. Big, round shoulders straightened up and held themselves high as he began to walk away, and she realized that like her but more polite, he simply meant to protect his own dignity in the face of an uncomfortable situation. For a few seconds, she continued to sit there in the dirt, completely at a loss as the sole topic to which she'd devoted what little free time she'd had was walking away and, by means of that, unknowingly tossing all her efforts into the proverbial trash can.

The bruise on her ego ached as she struggled to her feet a little too early, and her pride attempted to shove her back into the dirt in an attempt to preserve itself. She could already feel her face heat up as she took a few steps after him. This was not normal behavior for her; her normal behavior would have been to shoot him a rude gesture and walk away. She didn't need anybody.

"Where are you going?" she blurted out in a language. Some language. Like a teenager all over again, she shut her eyes tight and pursed her lips after saying it, as if her mouth had been moving beyond her control.

He couldn't have been more than four or five yards ahead of her, and due to the dense swamp foliage, he wasn't moving particularly fast. That medium blue ponytail spilled over that big, wide, uncovered back and it was a task not to leap forward and grab him by the hair to prevent him from walking away.

Over his shoulder, that gladiator style helmet looked back to hers, numerous holes forming a grill rather than opening into a slot for his eyes; it was like a silver light held behind a cheese grater, which was probably useful for protecting his face but did nothing for indicating his true reaction. She couldn't even see his eyebrows or the bridge of his nose.

His voice was by no means soft, but it gore no malice; just irritation. "I don't believe that's any of your business," he said as politely as such a line could be said. "Goddess light your path," he added in Zandali of all languages, emphasizing the comfort he felt slipping in and out of multiple cultures without seeming to notice it himself.

And then he began to walk away again. That burlap sack over one shoulder and his catch pole balanced on another, pushed past branches and started to disappear from her view, punctuating her own sense of disappointment.

For three years, she'd tried to reach out. Every child and grandchild of the twenty five women of Serenity proudly boasted about where they were from even though the ancestral village no longer existed, and every single one of them attended those annual picnics even if they never spoke to the others for the rest of the year. And even if it was only once a year, an annual meeting for a hundred years meant they knew each other rather well. For sure, they all noticed that Sharimara was the only one who had stopped attending; after her second divorce about fifteen years prior, any semblance of a personal life she'd had was gone. And there was this man, the only one who seemed to be more anonymous than her among their generation, threatening to push them both into anonymity again.

Fear mounted inside of her as she realized that her searching might culminate in a few tense words shared in a swamp and nothing more. Tossing her ideas of dignity and pride aside, she pulled out her trump card.

"Centrius Nightshade, son of Tirith and Oacaxo!"

Her voice echoed between the trees, sounding even louder due to the lack of wind or cicadas. The two of them breathed a bit heavily as they stood, that broad back of his heaving up and down a few times before he turned back to her. In an instant, so much of Sharimara's anxiety left her; much of the truth was out on the table. If her efforts were to be for naught, then at least let that conclusion be absolutely clear. Ambiguity would drive her mad.

Considering the fact that she was a stranger in the swamp, he should have reacted much more defensively than he did. Maybe, she thought, a part of him connected the dots: they were both of the same biracial background, were both trilingual in the same languages and, undoubtedly, she had tracked him down for a reason; a class whose job was to find people didn't simply stumble upon him by accident.

He turned around to face her fully, gripping the shaft of his catch pole but not taking a defensive stance. Even from behind that arcanite helmet, the tilt of his chin as he finally took a good, long look at her implied that she'd gotten through to him on some level.

"Who are you?" he asked intently, though not unkindly.

For the first time, she removed the helmet that covered her head and the top half of her face. Were he to have asked why, she wouldn't have had an answer; she didn't quite know why herself. But he began to stare at her the way she'd stared at him when he noticed her features: the batlike ears of a troll, a more delicate jawline and cheekbones like an elf, a nose that was in between. Two bright green eyes; not glowing with fel corruption, but with the more natural magic of night elf wardens, the only members of that race to have green eyes without the influence of the demonic or the arcane. She was as odd as he was, and he noticed.

"I'm..." She cleared her throat, finding a bit of nervousness welling up inside of her. She was exposed, but had nobody to thank for that except herself; she was the one who chose to reveal herself to his scrutiny. "I'm Sharimara Hearthglen, daughter of Cecilia and Khujand. My mother...Cecilia...was born Isurith Swiftfoot."

Apprehension tore at her as she found the results of her search preparing to reveal themselves to her. Her pulse raced; would he bear the same curiosity as she did? Or would he brush it off, wish her a nice life and leave her alone in the swamp with her idiocy?

When he set his burlap sack down to unclip his helmet, a one ton fallen tree was removed from her chest, allowing her to breathe again. Confusion, shock and a keen interest battled for which emotion would make itself the clearest on his chiseled features. "Isurith...Isurith! Your mother was one of the women of Serenity," he practically breathed out. That he had isolated himself from them became apparent through the awestruck surprise in his voice. "Your mother and mine, they were from Suramar...before the War of the Ancients ten thousand years ago."

"Yes...and they were shield sisters for the ten millennia that followed that war. They only lost contact after they lost immortality."

Though the two of them standing there in that marshland weren't family, their mothers had once held a bond that was just as strong. Sharimara had heard of every single one of the twenty four other women of Serenity, numerous stories from the Long Vigil decorating her childhood memories. And, judging by the way Centrius was looking at her, as if he'd been given a complement that made him feel shy, his mother had told him all about the others as well.

"Well...why didn't you just tell me who you were from the beginning?" he asked without any hesitation or shyness at all.

His openness was, once again, disarming. For so long she had dealt with the worst examples of Azerothian societies; honesty and sincerity were alien to her, and she wasn't sure how to react while still keeping up the barriers she'd built between herself and the world so many years ago.

"I...well...you see..." Sighing deeply, she didn't hide her frustration as she looked down and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Your reaction was unpredictable from my viewpoint. And my predicament was...unflattering."

He fell silent, and that sense of self consciousness set in again. When she looked up, she was struck by the faint ghost of a smile on his lips. Even if they'd never met before, and he probably never expected to meet anyone else descended from the same village, there was the slightest sense that he didn't view her entirely as a stranger.

"Nobody is perfect," she said with a shrug. That's it; one line and a shrug. She furrowed her brows in consternation as she failed to understand what his angle was, and as if to confound her even more, his shoulders relaxed and he raised an eyebrow - medium length, in the middle of their shared racial mix, just like hers. "This might sound like an odd question, so I beg your pardon. But...were you actually following me?" he asked, cautious more to avoid offending her rather than feeling any sort of shyness over his own presumption. "It just seems like a very odd coincidence that, of all people, two children of a hamlet in Nightsong Woods that no longer exists just happen to cross paths in a marsh thousands of miles away at random."

For a second her mouth dropped open, and she resisted the urge to snap her helmet back on. He was so casual, so light hearted about having been tracked down in the wilderness by a person he didn't know...was he that irreverent and borderline naive? Or was she just that cynical about people?

The muscles in her face and neck tightened as she tried to suppress the urge to answer a person behaving so cordially. She would never answer such a direct question normally, and she quickly felt as if she was out of her element. Her violet-blue cheeks flushed and she could feel it. The warden had fallen into a cage of her own design.

"I...well..." she mumbled, hating herself for letting another person affect her in such a way. Sharimara was cunning; she was confident; she was even a little bit arrogant at times, she had to admit. And the relative friendliness of a person she had been trying to find derailed her commanding demeanor in a way that dragonspawn, doomguards and liches could not.

By some miracle, the one who had caused her that anxiety (it certainly wasn't herself, oh no) saved her from it. "My apologies; I didn't mean to be so forward," he said in a voice that almost sounded like a laugh. It was warm and infectious, and she felt a mild sense of panic again as she felt the warmth trying to work its way into her own attitude. "But I'm happy to meet the descendant of a woman I've heard so much about. My mother always liked yours."

"I...thank you," Sharimara replied, finally finding a sort of proverbial footing, and she reminded herself to thank him for the save if and when she became comfortable enough to do so.

Centrius turned away from her to peer through the marsh trees before looking back to her. "I've not found what I was searching for in this part of the marsh; I'll need to head back toward New Theramore. It's maybe a ten hour hike and I'll need to stop for food and a nap." Her heart pounded in a way that made her angry at it, and she pretended that it wasn't because of her anticipation over what she knew he'd say. "Would you mind coming along? Since you're already here, it wouldn't make sense to part ways so soon. I imagine that my mother would feel disappointed in me if she knew I simply walked away."

Sharimara squealed quietly through her nose; it was a sound of both confusion and disbelief. After three years of researching a person she didn't know and bore no connection to, he was actually asking her to travel with him. It was so simple, and probably commonplace for normal people, but her lingering fear that she was a creeper still caused her to blush again at the offer.

"Yes...I mean, I don't mind at all," she replied.


	3. Chapter 3

After many long hours of walking, Sharimara and Centrius had finally stopped to rest when the lights of New Theramore appeared just over the horizon in the night sky. Food was expensive inside what was one of the busiest ports on Azeroth, and they'd opted to share what few rations they both had left instead.

Ironically, their attempts to share old stories had mostly been unsuccessful during the long trek toward the city. As they were both reminded, hiking through marshlands was exhausting, especially when wearing heavy metal armor. Much of their time was spent either grunting or discussing the best paths to take in order to avoid encountering any crockolisks. By the time they'd sat down a good ten hours later, all they'd managed to do was share a few stories both of their mothers had told them from different perspectives and the most basic information about what Tirith Nightshade and Cecilia Hearthglen (born Isurith Swiftfoot) had done with their lives after the ruination of their ancestral village.

It wasn't so significant, but it at least had helped Sharimara overcome the initial embarrassment and shyness she'd been afflicted with. Centrius, on the other hand, had seemed comfortable from the start.

Taking her waterskin and drinking from it without any squeamishness, he relaxed against the thick tree branches they'd found that could support their weight. "So I was born at an Argent Crusade charity hospital in Booty Bay, but that's literally my only experience with the city. We tended to hang back with the Explorer's League, which is much further to the north in that region."

She took the waterskin back from him and finished it. "So you grew up in Stranglethorn Vale but didn't travel the area much, I'm guessing?"

"No, not so much. Similar to what you mentioned about your family and Ratchet earlier - if you have everything you need, or at least you feel you do, then you might not feel the urge to travel."

She hummed in conformation, but concealed her mild sense of alarm when he drove the discussion toward her again. Despite having tried to track the man down for reasons even she didn't fully understand or question, she'd never imagined what their first meeting would be like; his tendency to peek over her emotional walls and ask questions about her life so casually out her off guard. But she felt she had no right to complain; after all, she was the one who had searched for him, and he was correct in saying that their mothers would probably be delighted at the connection made between their descendants so long after they'd already passed away.

"Right...that's right...so, uh, Centrius-"

"Cent is fine."

Grinning for no reason, she felt her own reaction was silly and tried to push past it. "Alright, then...Cent, you still haven't explained to me exactly who you were trying to catch back there; just that they're elusive and you've been tracking them for weeks."

He pulled out the last piece of his bread and tore it in half, offering the rest to her. "A dreadlord," he replied with a mouth full of bread."

"Wow...that's serious stuff," she responded in kind, almost biting her tongue in the process.

"That's the reason for the enchantment on the traps; I don't use magic, so I view it as an equalizer. Talons, I almost enjoy dealing with; being put to sleep, I do not."

"Why is there a dreadlord here, though? I haven't heard of any demonic activity here."

"He's rogue; no followers, no minions, just hiding out and waiting until...well, I guess until he can figure out where to flee to next. It's a good sign that he's on the run since it means they don't have a whole infestation, but these types of demons still aren't a joke on their own."

The two of them munched on bread, and she snuck a peek at the edge of his jawline and the top of his neck as he chewed. His face was entirely hairless, but not from shaving; she could tell that it was genetics. It was strange; both night elf and jungle troll men tended to sport beards, unlike the high elves and forest trolls of Lordaeron.

Catching herself before her gaze began to drift down the curve of his trapezius and onto his single exposed shoulder, she tried to focus again. "So are you like...a monster hunter?" she asked.

He grunted in affirmation until he could swallow the piece of bread he'd been chewing. "You could say that. My reputation is such that I'm usually called in to remove animals from populated rural areas, or to track down...well, monsters, out in the empty lands, far away from cities. I don't usually get sent after people the way you do...which I guess makes you a bounty huntress?"

Talk about work, she could handle. "Yes, that's how I'm known in the circles I deal with," she replied cheerily, upbeat despite the grueling hike they'd just finished. "Cities are where I thrive. Cities and especially port cities, because that tends to be where the worst criminals congregate. Though currently - as in, after three weeks and four days - I might be in the high seas." She took out what little elk jerky she had saved in a slim, compressed pouch strapped to her inner thigh and gave him half.

"Oh, it's smoked!" he beamed as he bit into it.

"Only the best. Especially when you're on the move and don't have much space."

"Absolutely, and thanks. So your next job sounds like you're dealing with pirates...are they the ones that have been harassing merchant vessels off the east coast of Khaz Modan?"

"Further south, now. The dwarves chased them away and then promptly left the scurvy dogs to harass everyone else's cargo ships. The bounty was put out by a trade prince in the Swamp of Sorrows, but nobody had the guts. He wrote to me personally and was willing to wait for the boat ride across the ocean."

Centrius looked up toward the horizon again as he did math in his head. They were in front of a particularly murky bog, and the sky was open all the way until the lights of New Theramore. "You need to leave soon if you want to make the promised date. Very soon."

So comfortable had Sharimara grown that she'd already let her guard down; ten hours spent on a single hike should have felt like nothing to her, and yet there she was, blabbering away about her secrets already. "I know; in fact, I need to catch the next boat across the ocean as soon as I can. That's part of what made this current trip so strenuous; it's a bit of a detour and I only had a few days here in Dustwallow...to...find..." Catatonic, she felt ever hair follicle of her mane stand up on the back of her neck as she realized she'd thrown herself under the spotlight again. Stupid, she thought to herself.

As she'd expected, he'd started to chew a little more slowly and was giving her a puzzled look. "To find what?" he asked sincerely. It was so direct and honest that she'd feel rude not to answer; and in this one case, to be rude would bother her greatly.

She swallowed the jerky that had been in her mouth, and felt the lump move all the way down her throat. She hadn't chewed on it enough, and it almost made her eyes water in the way down. Meek and uncomfortable, she tried to keep her lips pressed tight, but when she looked up at him he was still giving her a curious expression.

"As you...how can I put this...as you know, the women of Serenity were so few, and the good majority have died of old age. Accurate records are kept, though, even as the great grandchildren - the children of my nieces and nephews - are now raising children of their own. And when I checked records a while back...I found that everybody was accounted for except for your mother. You're like the missing link, and at the annual picnics that our generation throws, there are never any representatives for your mother's bloodline."

"So, you're a bounty huntress by night, and a researcher by day?" he asked again.

"No, not really. I haven't attended those picnics in a very long time...I'm not a researcher."

That lump remained in her throat when he continued to give her that unassuming but very curious look. "Then why did you come to find me?"

Silence. Backed into a corner, she couldn't help but meet his gaze. It wasn't piercing or even intense, but she could tell that he wasn't going to drop the issue.

And why would he? It was his right to know. He'd obviously made a point not to contact anybody from an ancestral group that had been the focal point of his mother's entire life. Then out of the blue, she had stalked him through a marshland that was half a day's hike from any signs of civilization. Had the situation been reversed, she might killed him by now, or would at least have just left him ensnared in the tree.

"I...Centrius, look-"

"Cent is fine, Shari," he told her firmly. There was a sort of seriousness to his voice despite the endearing way he guessed her nickname without asking permission to use it, as if he was try to balance a sort of familiarity for their mothers' sakes on one side and his right to privacy on the other.

"Cent...you're right, you mentioned that. Well." Breathing deeply, she realized that hoping for a thunderstorm to begin right at that moment wasn't realistic, and if she lied, then he'd most likely ask more questions and put her in a tight spot.

But she had no right to complain...this is what she'd been searching for during the past three years. She put herself in a situation where she'd have to let her wall come down just a little bit...but acceptance of that fact didn't reduce her mild alarm at the sense of being exposed.

"I am...not an eloquent or well spoken person, by any stretch of those terms. So I will answer your question, and maybe some parts will sound odd and you can let me know." She searched his face for some sort of a reaction, but only found that same sense of dignified calm which gave her absolutely no clues as to how he felt about her answer. "Alright?"

"Not all of us are able to say the right thing at the right time," he replied after a moment of reflection. "It's nothing to feel ashamed of."

She failed to hide the suspicious arch to her eyebrows. What the hell was this guy on about? "Very well...okay, so, why did I come to find you."

"Relax."

"I'm...okay, thank you," she replied, fighting the mild irritation that threatened to mix with her social anxiety. "For a very long time, I've not been in contact with the children of Serenity. Due to certain circumstances, I left home after my parents...after they passed on to the hereafter. And for the past eighty one years, I've been wandering, taking whatever jobs come. My siblings have received a few letters from me, but for all intents and purposes, I've cut my ties and am simply unable to accept rekindling them at this time. Not yet."

The way he looked at her the entire time caused her to almost shake as she spoke. In truth, she'd found saying out loud, for the first time, her anxieties about her personal life much easier in front of him than it would have been in front of anybody else. A complete stranger would have been too distant and unfamiliar to trust; anybody else from the children of Serenity would have been too close for comfort. But that didn't mean that it was completely easy; for when she uttered those words out loud, it felt as if she was coming to the full realization of them herself for the first time, despite the fact that she'd carried those misgivings for so, so long.

She must have pleased the goddess in some way or another. In the back of her mind, she'd feared his reaction the moment she heard his soothing yet firm voice for the first time. While hanging from his snare in that tree, she'd convinced herself that she truly was a stalker rather than a casual researcher of her mother's roots; to have been caught in his trap was humiliating enough, but the thought of him rejecting all her efforts as the behavior of a creeper would have pushed her even further into her shell. But his reaction couldn't have been further from that.

Leaning back against the trunk of the tree, he shifted his heavy weight on the base of the branch. "So you felt cut off from your roots, and thought you'd find a kindred spirit in the only child of Serenity who was unknown and never kept in touch with anybody," he hummed quietly, a thoughtful look in his eyes that surprised her beyond all belief.

Regardless of that sense of relief, her ears drooped low all the same. "I'm being immature," she signed in defeat, embarrassed despite his relatively positive reaction.

"Oh stop. It doesn't matter how old one is; sentient beings are not meant to live alone. Whether we're twenty or two hundred or more, living without any sort of connection with other people wears on the soul. It isn't healthy. I can tell you from first hand experience - I've obviously been living that way for a very long time."

The ease at which he spoke confounded her. On her end, the confession of why she'd been tracking him down stressed her out so much that forcing herself to sit and answer his question rather than excuse herself and run back to the city actually caused her to grit her molar teeth. His total lack of inhibitions when admitting what was probably an equally severe sense of loneliness both perplexed her, as well as made her feel rather envious.

"You're...not angry that I followed you?" she asked sheepishly, once again cursing herself for her tone of voice and reminding herself that she was almost one hundred and thirty years old, and not just thirty.

When he leaned back and laughed, she almost felt a tingle up her spine. It was the first time she'd heard the sound in ten hours, which might have been why it sounded so magical. She wished she could crack jokes that other people actually understood, just so she could hear that sound again. "Not you, not the daughter of Isurith...or I guess Cecilia, no. If it were anybody else I'd probably have left you there, but in this case, I'm actually glad that you found me."

Despite the pleasant nature of the way he spoke, she still found his reactions difficult to understand. "If you don't mind, then why don't you stay in touch with any of the others?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "I never was one for big gatherings. Mom never cared to keep in touch with anybody and dad had been kicked out of his tribe, so we kept to ourselves. They passed on, and their closest friends were humans and really old dwarves, and then they passed on. By that time I'd already built a life of my own there in Stranglethorn, so to be honest, Kalimdor didn't even cross my mind at the time. It's only really now that I find myself cut off from my roots..." His monologue finished, he laid an arm behind his head, against the trunk of the tree and looked back to her. "I guess you and I are in the same boat, in that sense."

Her ears stopped drooping at the comparison, and she began to feel a little less embarrassed for her situation in life and her feelings. "You mean, you're cut off from siblings, too? Did Tirith and Oacaxo have other kids?"

For the first time, Centrius became a bit quiet, as if his own wall had been breached. Unlike Sharimara, however, he got over it in a matter of seconds. "No, no brothers or sisters. I have a daughter who I haven't seen in a few decades; relations were fine, but due to the circumstances of our jobs, I literally lost touch with her and her husband. I have hope of finding them again, though. The cutoff is mainly from my wife and son, goddess light their paths."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!"

Finally, she got to hear that deep, relaxed laugh again, though she couldn't enjoy it as much considering the raw feelings she felt she'd unearthed. "People always say that, and I always say, why? My wife died of natural causes; my son died fighting in a just war. It isn't like it's anybody's fault; that's life. We have to move on."

A deep, raw pain bled inside of Sharimara, and she observed the way that Centrius spoke of his loss in such casual terms. "You speak about the death of one's offspring so easily," she said softly, an air of both admiration and something else in her voice.

He shrugged. "Bottling up that kind of pain doesn't work. It festers and grows worse until you can deal with it. And in my experience, I've found that talking about it openly works."

At that, she fell silent and pursed her lips into a tight line. The conversation tapered off, and they finished their food in silence. Far off in the distance, a small amount of nighttime traffic could be discerned as the silhouettes of horses and wagons passed in front of the lanterns lighting the highway into New Theramore. Centrius was the first to slide out of the tree once they had both rested and felt no more reason to linger.

"We should go. I need to sleep and restock my supplies, and you need to buy a ticket out of here as soon as you can."

She leapt down after him and dusted her armor off. "I know...it seems that our meeting has come to an end."

The hike the rest of the way toward the paved road leading into New Theramore couldn't have taken more than half an hour. Their conversation along the way was mostly focused on the logistic and the mundane; there was a single ticket booth at the port that still operated after dark, and she'd need to make her way there and purchase tickets for the Swamp of Sorrows as soon as she could. He gave her the addresses of a few hostels at the port in case she'd have time to sleep, and they talked a little more about their current plans.

Entering the city took some time. Neither of them were a member of the four main recognized factions: she bore an identification card from the Steamwheedle Cartel, and he only had a document of identity from the Explorer's League. Once inside, though, they were able to breathe easy on the relatively empty streets of New Theramore after dark.

On a quiet main street, the two of them stood before each other. After three years, her search had culminated in a pleasant but very short meeting. She removed her helmet to look up at him again, feeling at a loss.

"Is this goodbye, then?" she asked in a voice that sounded more disappointed than she'd intended him to hear.

Uninhibited as always, he didn't hide the slight sense of melancholy on his face when he removed his own helmet, too. "Well, I'd like to think of it as see you later. It's taken a good hundred plus years, but I've finally met someone else from mom's ancestral village. I'd be sorely disappointed if I never saw you again."

Do not blush you idiot, she hissed at herself internally. "I feel much the same. But...what now? You mentioned on the way here that people have already hired you for work ahead of time, just like me; we'll both be busy for months."

He reached up and scratched his head absentmindedly. "Well...you'll be around the southern cone of the Eastern Kingdoms. And the way things are looking currently, I might be around there in July." For the first time, he blushed, which almost caused her to blush again too. "Listen, Shari...we're both busy people, and we just met, but it would mean a lot if we could meet up. And I know it's a long time ahead - three months, just about - but...ah..."

For the first time, he seemed to be the one who hesitated, and it was adorable. "...you want us to meet again after three months?" she asked, grinning wide when she realized that she wasn't the only one who felt sheepish anymore.

He smiled in reaction, and the tension quickly melted away. "Typically, people tend to make plans to see each other a week or so later. Three months could be asking a lot of you."

"No, no it isn't. I'd be glad to meet you again after three months, and I'm glad that you asked so I didn't have to!" she laughed out loud. "But where? How?"

He only thought for a moment. "Well...everybody tends to meet in Booty Bay. It's the only port city in the area with a real night life; Grom'Gol isn't exactly known for tourism."

"And you said July, so let's pick a day...July fifteenth? The middle of the month?"

"I'll arrange my own tickets and lodging as soon as I can," he replied. It was so natural, so devoid of awkwardness that she felt that log rolled off her chest again. A perfect set of teeth flashed at her; like her, he'd apparently been born without tusks. "I do hope you won't stand me up."

"What? No, I don't do things like that. I spent three y...months researching you, I can spend another three months before we're able to meet up. It will be a fun weekend in Booty Bay."

"Alright, there's a bait and tackle shop just by the passenger docks. It isn't a great place to meet up, but it has a sign with a giant prawn on it that's hard to miss. The place is called Cho-cho's or something stupid like that."

"Right; July fifteenth, Booty Bay, stupid looking bait shop owned by Cho-cho," she chortled, breathing easily and freely for the first time since they'd met. The two of them settled down and she couldn't help but grin at the way he felt no shyness about eye contact. "So this is see you later, then?"

"That it is. See you in three months. Mark it on your calendar!"

She tried to extend her hand for a shake - which wasn't the normal greeting or parting for either elves or trolls - and mildly panicked when he leaned forward. Big arms wrapped around her as he actually gave her a hug, and she became very, very aware of the fact that he was still technically shirtless. She held her breath for fear of taking in too much of his scent; it had been almost a decade since she'd last felt the caress of a man's rough hand on her skin and feared that her reaction would be too untempered.

She hugged him back slightly, though her gauntlets blocked out most sensation and she felt both disappointed and relieved that she couldn't feel the warmth of his hide. They let go and both laughed, and that sense of immaturity settled in again.

"I'm going to show up, and you'd better be there," she warned him as they began to walk in opposite directions.

He was halfway down the empty street when he replied. "I keep my promises," he said just before disappearing from sight.


	4. Chapter 4

A large retinue of bruisers were waiting at the docks at Bogpaddle. All other ships had been ushered aside that night once the lighthouse had first sighted the ragged pirate ship flying a flag of the Steamwheedle Cartel. Dock workers had been recruited during the boat's final approach, and a tugboat pushed it along to close the rest of the gap before those on the pier could throw lassos over whichever posts on the deck they could gain ahold of. The head security official in Bogpaddle - a goblin civilian holding a heavy clipboard and nodding in approval - patiently waited as the last pirate ship arrived and marked the end of a two month struggle at sea.

For a person over a century old, there was plenty of time to gain new skills. Quite a few of them bore no relation to Sharimara's profession, and were simply interesting hobbies or abilities she'd picked up along the way. Unfortunately for her, sailing was not one of them.

"Clockwise! Clockwise!" shouted one of the dock workers as she struggled to steer the ship properly into the port.

"The rudder is stuck!" she shouted back just as the pirate ship struck the dock and grated against it uncomfortably. Had she not been responsible for single handedly breaking up one of the worst instances of piracy in the history of the east coast, she might have been asked to pay for the damages.

The tugboat as well as the dockworkers stabilized the ship enough to finally tie it down, and with some direction from the workers, Sharimara figured out how to drop the anchor. The ship came to a halt, and soon enough the bruisers had boarded. Armed to the teeth, they knew she wouldn't have approached the city if the pirates still posed a danger, but protocol was protocol.

Stickshift, the head security official, hurried up the wooden ramp the dock workers had set up and met Sharimara on the deck. Blood splattered the wooden planks and was smeared up part of the mast; numerous cutlasses and bags of gunpowder had been piled near the stern, and the fifteen surviving pirates and crew members were bound and gagged near the bow. Most of them had simply fallen asleep after having been tied up for so many hours, and those who were awake made no more attempts to resist. It wouldn't make any sense for them to even try, after having seen the way one person decapitated the captain, first mate and six of their gunners before they'd even had a chance to react. None of them had even seen the speedy vessel she'd used to chase them down in the fog and then climb up the side of the ship; as far as they knew, she was the avatar of vengeance herself, sent by Elune to punish them for their sins. At least, that's what she'd told them.

Prisoner's rights be damned, the bruisers literally tossed the bound pirates onto the ramp and sent them rolling precariously toward the dock. More of the small but notoriously violent goblin guards were waiting, and dragged the offenders off to whatever suspended cages they'd be kept in for the foreseeable future. Ignoring what she didn't consider any of her business, Sharimara turned to her employer while he busied himself ticking check marks in boxes on his clipboard.

"Great work, Hearthglen," Stickshift said while filling out a form. "The boss was right to wait for your arrival. These dogs were willing to live their entire lives at sea; nobody was willing to spend a few weeks living on a boat too and chasing them through the fog. I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't accepted the offer."

After he'd finished, she accepted the form and his pencil, but took her time inspecting it before signing. She'd grown up in a Steamwheedle city with a family who did much of their business through the cartel; she knew the organization well, felt comfortable with it but also knew not to sign anything without reading first.

"This is what I live for," she replied, relishing the way the pirates had shrieked when she first cast her blink spell and teleported directly into their field of vision.

The form appeared to be a simple report of work complete. As always, there were numerous deductions other than the scrape against the dock. Such was part the course when working as a mercenary; bounties were only paid in full for simple wanted posters, and few villains on Azeroth could fetch a price on their head higher than five hundred gold anymore. Gone were the days of undead plagues and demonic invasions, of powerful individuals wreaking havoc and interdimensional portals being torn open. On the modern era, Azeroth's problem was simply that it was a world at war; individuals no longer mattered.

And so, the bounty huntress found herself working more elaborate jobs, and those complications invariably meant various ways that factions and organizations could cut corners and deduct or delay payment. Her job was nowhere near as glamorous as many a young lady thought when approaching her at taverns and asking how to work their way into the field. Sharimara signed, suppressing a sigh as she did math in her head and calculated how much money she'd need to spend just on laundry service and runners during the rest of her stay. Working as a mercenary required her to live out of inns and hotels; it was an expensive lifestyle, and after having taken a vacation a few months before for a personal endeavor, she had reached a point where she'd be accepting every quest offered to her.

Which Stickshift was well aware of.

"By the way, Hearthglen, I have some news about that next job the boss has open," the diminutive but absolutely confident and self assured goblin said. "About the mogu invasion."

Her ears pricked up, and he held on to the clipboard for a moment of thought. The bruisers inspected every level of the ship, and Stickshift appeared to be in no rush. Currency symbols flashed through Sharimara's mind, and she had to suppress her joy at the big payoff. "Yes, the Heavenly Guard rogue nation has made serious headway in their invasion of the Grizzly Hills and Icecrown. Hundreds of tuskarr and peaceful vrykul have been enslaved. Terrible ordeal."

"That's not what the goal is; always keep that in mind," the amoral head of Bogpaddle security replied. "Our trade prince has a serious contract with the Forsaken, who are rather unhappy about having a mogu country on their doorstep. They want him to supply infiltrators on the front lines. That means you, more than anybody else we've recruited so far."

"What sort of commitment are we looking at?"

Stickshift flipped to another page on his clipboard, nearly losing some papers to the midnight wind in the process. "Minimum fourteen month rotation from the time you arrive; our current contract is for two years. But judging by how the war effort has been going so far, it's doubtful that the conflict will end that soon. The vrykul and mogu are both a bunch of brutes, but the mogu are way more organized and intelligent, and the Forsaken are loathe to put their own people on the front lines. Nobody knows why...they don't allow outsiders into their territory currently, so everything from the Howlong Fjord to Tirisfal and south to Hillsbrad is basically a dark zone in terms of news."

"At least they mind their own business; that much can be said," Sharimara murmured while continuing to do the math in her head.

"That they do. So for whatever reason, they're just throwing mercenaries at the front lines the way they usually just throw ghouls and skeletons like cannon fodder, which is rather typical of their strategies. From the day a contractor arrives - that would be you - you have a minimum fourteen month commitment. All funds will be waiting for you in a Steamwheedle account upon the end of your contract, and rollover will be available depending on how long the war drags on for. Per the policy of the Forsaken, there will be radio silence while there - everything is top secret since you'll be spying on the mogu more than killing them."

"That's...not a short commitment-"

"You're half elf, sweetheart. It's nothing to you, and if you survive, you could probably take a year or two off work afterward. The mogu have some nice artifacts- on top of your pay, you can loot pretty much anything you want. I have a feeling the Forsaken wouldn't care if you loot a few vrykul or tuskarr settlements either..."

"I don't pillage civilian towns," she replied firmly, and he respectfully backed down. "But the rest is right up my alley. How soon do they need me there?"

Stickshift flipped through a few more pages and then puffed up his cheeks as he blew air into his mouth. "Around the time you started this current job, technically. It's a mess up there, and while the Forsaken are understanding that this is short notice - all zeppelin travel to Northrend has been stopped ever since the mogu figured out how to operate anti-air cannons - they are pressuring us. You're looking at a three week ship ride from here, and that's assuming the best weather conditions possible and literally no stops at all." He finally left his clipboard to look at her; while there was no sentiment in his eyes, he did give her a very serious look of professional respect, a rarity among cartel officials. "We need someone up there soon. If it isn't you then the boss will find someone else, and your reputation will be damaged. As a...an acquaintance, let's say, I strongly advise you not to wait."

"Duly noted. Just wait..." She held her thumb on his clipboard, looking at the date of a contract which bore her name on it in advance. It was a great offer, and the cartel rarely treated mercenaries so well, but her heart began to shift as she ran through the imaginary calendar in her head. "Tomorrow morning is the morning of the 14th..."

For a few seconds, she went blank. It was a bit awkward in front of someone she worked with; her demeanor was always so stoic, confident to a fault and completely unemotional. But the thought of a person she still didn't know that well, a person who affected her more than she liked to admit, crossed her mind.

For the past two months, Sharimara had fallen back into her cold, calculating mindset when on the job. She was a Warden Hearthglen, hanging around pirate coves to gather information until she knew which part of the seas the pirates in question had charted as their home. When living on a little speedboat boat in the ocean, eating fish, drinking rainwater and going to the bathroom over the side, there was no room for feelings. Not when she had to track down a ship of heartless criminals who lived off of stolen food and left weary travelers destitute for a living. Truth be told, she hadn't thought about Centrius much during the past few months.

Did she still feel the same now as she did thre months ago? They'd known each other for literally one day. Having sought him out for three years, she thought she knew a little bit about him from the spying she'd done in mercenary camps across the globe, but meeting him in person made her realize that she didn't actually know him. Regardless, they'd gotten along so well, a rarity for her after so many broken friendships and relationships, and so many years spent living in hotels without a single long term friend; Stickshift was probably the closest thing she had to an acquaintance, and he might not even quite reach that level. And that, more than anything, made her feel a little sorry for herself.

She shook her head, realizing that she'd just been standing there in response to a question. For how long had she been standing there lost in her own thoughts?

Cocking his head at her sideways, Stickshift looked a little concerned. "Everything alright, Hearthglen?" he asked awkwardly.

For the first time in many, many years, she actually felt embarrassed in front of somebody. Well, somebody other than Centrius, at least. What had that man done to her? "Yes, yes, I'm fine. But...I have a very, very important appointment in Booty Bay on the fifteenth. Is it possible for you to arrange a boat ticket from there?"

Were it any other goblin cartel official, she might have been told right there in the spot that she just lost the job. Fortunately, Stickshift was a little less cruel than most, and even though they weren't on a first name basis with each other, he had signed off on her contracts enough times that he was willing to make a deal with her. "I don't have a problem with it, but I'm not the one who matters here; in terms of your reputation, I'm nobody. The boss doesn't care about anybody's personal business, though. As it is, we're hurting for an infiltrator. Let's see..."

Much like Sharimara occasionally did, Stickshift began counting on his fingers. "...so you need to leave from the flight point here first thing in the morning, without delay, if you want to make your very important appointment. It will take you a day or so to fly all the way to Booty Bay, because whatever mount you rent will need to rest halfway there. There are no Steamwheedle flight points until Booty Bay; you'll have to stop at an Alliance town, so there will be no way to trade in your mount for another. You'll just have to stop and give it a rest."

"And once I arrive? What are the schedules for ships to Northrend from Booty Bay? I know you have pretty much everything on that clipboard of yours."

"Damn straight," he beamed proudly. Flipping to a chart on another page, he quickly found what they were looking for. "Let me see...yes. Wow. Holy shit."

"What?"

"The sixteenth."

"Of this month?!" she exclaimed.

"Every eight days; a week plus one day. So the first, then the eighth, then the sixteenth, then the twenty fourth."

"Let me get on the ship for the twenty fourth."

Stickshift continued to look at the chart, staring at it with a perfect poker face as he waited a few seconds. When he gripped the clipboard a little more tightly, Sharimara could already feel her heart sinking toward the pit of her stomach. "Hearthglen...if I may-"

"Here we go."

"Yes, we do. You're a person of rare talent, but not unique talent. I might be a fraction of your age, but I've seen plenty of heroines and heroes come and go. You know what our world is like," he said while sweeping his free hand to indicate the gnolls, hobgoblins and other goblins clearing out the stolen loot from below the deck. "The boss will drop you and never call you again. The delay from this piracy job is his fault; he's the one who asked you to do it, and you've had a reason not to show up until now. After now, you don't."

Shutting away her personal feelings, she tried to force herself to look at the situation objectively. As much as she hated hearing it, she knew Stickshift well enough to respect his knowledge of how the higher levels of the cartel - which her parents had never dealt with - functioned. "You want me to fly to Booty Bay tomorrow, spend a single day there for my personal business, and then just leave the very next morning."

Without a hint of pomp or grandstanding, the unscrupulous little man strained his neck and looked her right in the eye. "If you'd told me about your plans from the beginning, I might have been able to find an excuse for you to show up even later. Only a few days at the most - something like a zeppelin flight to Grom'Gol and then an emergency ship from there."

"Hindsight..." she mumbled. "I'd been so focused on the job that I just assumed...well, I didn't know the schedules of the Northrend job, or that you'd even have the contract ready for me on the same night I finished this one."

"I didn't. This contract was ready for you a week ago; I was just waiting for you to return to port."

Bright green eyes dimmed slightly, her only means of working out the disappointment she had to conceal. "Then...my career must come first. Personal appointments can wait."

"Well...if you really want to view it that way, we do have a ship set to leave for Northrend, from right here in Bogpaddle. If you agreed, I could shift their schedule forward and have to leave tomorrow; we're already further north and it would be a two day head start. Your first contract would finish earlier-"

"Two days earlier?" Sharimara asked incredulously. "It's a fourteen month minimum, what difference would two days make at the end?"

"What difference do they make now?" Stickshift asked.

A cordial but slightly tense staredown ensued. Sharimara had to hand it to the goblin for one thing: he was the most fearless member of the shorter races she'd ever met. Humans, orcs, gnolls, pandaren and even harpies could easily be intimidated. Stickshift would stand up to a flesh titan if there was money involved; he was like a murloc, but intelligent and greedy as hell. This time, he didn't back down, and she let what felt like a personal slight slide.

"It makes a personal difference," she replied, using as polite a tone as she could muster. For someone with so few people who even knew her name, she couldn't afford to argue with him over a comment; he was probably trying to help as much as his position would allow anyway. "Please, get me a seat on the ship leaving Booty Bay on the sixteenth. I'll make sure I'm on it."

"I'll have it arranged before I go home for the night. Just sign here." Stickshift handed her the clipboard for her to sign for the Northrend job. She noticed the numbers listed under the section about compensation; even after deductions, she really might not need to work for a few years after that. She signed, and he rearranged all the papers on the clipboard. "I know you don't trust rockets, so I'll try to have the best long distance nether ray ready for you tomorrow. They're ugly as sin, but faster on a straight trip without curves than Azerothian mounts."

"Thank you, Stickshift. So much."

"Make this Northrend job work out, and that's all the thanks I need. And I'm not even charging you for this, so you know it's about as close to an act of friendship I'd ever give. Don't make me look bad."

"I won't," Sharimara replied as she turned and walked away. Another positive aspect of working with a cartel was that lengthy goodbyes weren't expected; she signed, and she was free to return to her musty, lonesome motel room by the edge of the swamp.

On her way back, a measure of that self consciousness infected her again. Had it really been three months since she and Centrius had met? She'd been working so hard that it hadn't crossed her mind.

When she saw him again...would she feel the same?

Would he?

She shook her head...what was she on about? Feel the same...in what way? They'd spent a single day together. By all measures, this was a meeting of two friends; she knew it might turn into a date if their personalities happened to mesh in that way, but it might also just remain as a meeting of two friends. There was no reason at all for her to be feeling so much anxiety.

Perhaps it was just the sudden shock of realizing how quickly it would all happen. Three months ago, she'd thought that they might be able to spend an entire weekend together; even if they didn't have that chemistry as anything more than friends, she still enjoyed being around him. The discovery that they'd only have a single day together before she was sent to behind enemy lines against a mogu invasion of Northrend stung hard.

Aching muscles concealed beneath blood spattered armor carried her along the pier at Bogpaddle until she reached the creaky room she'd kept reserved, one of many expenses one incurred when living out of a suitcase. Maybe she just needed the ride across the continent to clear her mind. Resigning herself to just trying to relax and enjoy the fact that she'd found a person she hoped she could comfortably spend time with, Sharimara reached the door of her motel room and nearly collapsed on the moldy old couch after locking the latch behind her.

"I keep my promises, too," she murmured before falling asleep in her armor.


	5. Chapter 5

Sharimara leaned forward on the sandpapered reception desk, watching the orcish woman flip through the guest book. Normally she tried not to lean forward like that when dealing with members of the shorter races - she'd been told that her gaze was intense, especially when she didn't smile. And after a day plus a bit of extra time spent flying east to west across a continent, she knew she was probably scowling without even feeling it. By that point, however, she was finding it a bit difficult to contain her displeasure.

The orc didn't look up even after her green finger hung under the full page of columns on an official Steamwheedle ledger. "I'm very sorry, miss Hearthglen, but all the bunks for transient employees and contractors have been filled. We can store your luggage until your ship leaves tomorrow, but there's nowhere for you to stay-"

"Stickshift sent the arrangements for a room ahead of time," Sharimara replied. She disliked the hostility she could hear in her own tone, but after so many years of seeing intimidation as the only alternative to killing people based on her profession, she found it difficult to conceal her displeasure.

Intimidation beginning to work on the young orc and guilt beginning to prick at the older halfbreed, the conversation hit a lull before the green skinned woman spoke again. "I'm sorry, miss Hearthglen, but all officials from outside the region can do is file a request; not an order," the woman explained. "And before you even arrived this morning, every bunk we have is booked."

"Check the men's side," the warden ordered curtly.

Despite the fact that it would breach protocol, the nervous orc did as she was ordered and checked the ledger again. "They're full, so I couldn't even bend the rules for you."

Turning around, Sharimara tried to stake out any space she could in the lobby of the Steamwheedle employee and contractor bunkhouse. There must have been some type of convention or something, because even the couches and the hard wooden benches inside had groups of people sleeping on them. She was entirely too large to sleep among a group of goblins and gnomes she might roll on top of in her sleep, so trying to stake out a spot on the crowded rug in the corner was also out of the question.

She returned to the conversation and leaned her weight onto her balled fists until the wood of the reception desk creaked. The orc cringed away from her, as if she expected to be struck. "I'm sorry," Sharimara mumbled while shifting more weight back to her feet. "I know it's not your fault."

"We can still keep all of your belongings under lock and key; we can even move them straight onto your ship for you when it arrives," the receptionist offered the sharp featured, green eyed shadow looming over her. "It's a Steamwheedle ship, so shifting luggage is an automatic and free service."

I know that you imbecile, she prevented herself from uttering at the last second. "Thank you," Sharimara forced herself to reply, working to suppress a hiss from escaping her nose.

"Sarah! Please!" the receptionist called to one of the porters - female ogre who pretty much looked like a male aside from the fact that she also wore a wrapped linen top in addition to the sumo undies that all ogres seemed to sport. The horned porter took up Sharimara's two suitcases, her footlocker and her armor case and waddled into a storage room full of safe boxes and patrolled by a rather mean looking old human mage.

In the lobby, the orc woman fumbled a slip of paper and began scribbling down the information on Sharimara's identification documents. "Alright miss Hearthglen, you can access your belongings at any time, but please keep in mind that we only have one porter on staff during the night shift. Whether you return or not, your luggage will be moved onto the ship unless we receive further notice - please be on time. I mean, if that's alright with you."

Though she wasn't blaming the young orc, the warden did find it difficult to smile at such a time. "Thank you," she murmured at a volume just barely loud enough to be heard.

After returning Sharimara's personal documents to her, the orc wrought her hands and sat down again. "If I may, Warden Hearthglen...you are in Booty Bay. There's a small convention for veterans of the Fifth War in the city tonight - which is why you won't find a free hotel room anywhere - but do you really need a hotel room?"

Sharimara tried to prevent that scowl from returning, and she knew she failed hardcore when the orc cringed again. "Are you suggesting that I spend my last night before official work duty partying nonstop like an irresponsible teenager?" she asked rhetorically.

"Um...yes?" the orc replied, though uncertainty marked the woman's tone.

Pursing her lips, Sharimara gave the woman one last look before putting her sunglasses on and walking out into the bright, humid day in the tropics. "Thanks for the advice," she grumbled while walking out. The orc and ogre women both breathed sighs of relief behind her, though the old human man carrying a staff harrumphed in a way only the nobility of his race seemed capable of.

Once outside, the warden found herself able to breathe just a little bit easier. Logistically, everything she needed was arranged for her: her luggage would be handled, her very well paying job was ready and she'd be able to sleep on the long voyage to the northernmost continent. She might not have a warm bed for the night there in Booty Bay, but what the receptionist had said technically was correct: it was a party city. It's not as though she'd be shut out in the cold with nothing to eat or drink.

"Watch it!" she snapped at a tauren dock worker who lightly brushed into her. Though he was large and with friends, the way her nose pulled tight when she sneered caused the furry man to think twice before answering and the group of laborers continued on their way.

At first, she had the urge to watch them until they were out of sight; it wouldn't have exactly been her normal response to a minor slight, though. She was stressed; she knew that. But why?

Everything was fine. She had what she needed. She even located the stupid looking bait shop owned by Cho-cho within minutes of walking away from the docks. It was one of the few places that wasn't abuzz with activity, and she even found an unoccupied bench to sit on as she waited outside. The weather was pleasant, the city was still quiet by the standards of a seedy goblin cove and she felt fine physically. But the way she found herself straightening up every time she saw someone with blue hair in the crowd of passersby bothered her. The way she kept examining her denim jeans and the knee length blouse she wore over it bothered her. The way she couldn't stop thinking of whether it would be better and smoother to remain sitting when he arrived or to stand to greet him bothered her.

The way she couldn't relax bothered her. This wasn't her at all.

A few minutes passed. Then a few minutes more. She found herself second guessing her decision...what was she doing there? Three months ago she'd met a man in the woods whose mother had known hers, but who hadn't kept in touch. Both of their sets of parents had been dead for almost a century and, truth be told, it was a pleasant meeting that only lasted half a day. That was the thing about Centrius: he didn't know her. She'd spent three years tracking him down due to a weird, immature sense of loneliness; he just knew her for half a day and then offered to meet her a quarter of a year later. Across the ocean. In front of a bait shop...

"This was...so foolish," she murmured to herself while facepalming there on the bench.

What was she expecting? That he'd remember her? That he'd show up? No. She was a hundred and twenty eight years old; she was far too experienced with the lies of men to fool herself any longer. One hour, tops, is all she'd grant him; her dignity was not worth it to wait for a man who probably didn't even remember their date. In fact, it wasn't even a date, it was-

"Shari?"

She tensed up so quickly that she almost pressed her fingernails into her face. She actually hadn't waited that long since she'd sat on the bench; in fact, she'd expected to wait a lot longer, which was part of the shock. But that familiar voice she'd heard for a day a good deal of time ago was very much real...and very much relieved.

Splitting her fingers apart, she was able to see him out of his armor for the first time and found herself unable to look away. Dressed in the sort of plain style that was accepted internationally, he looked like he could be a part of her family - multiracial people and those who lived in diverse cities in general all tended to wear the same sort of nondescript clothing. He wore denim pants like her, as well as a loose smock that somehow stretched a bit over his shoulders and chest. To see him dressed like a normal person, when they were both out of their armor...well, her heart had already started to flutter, and she spat at herself internally for reacting in such a way to what was probably just a friendly appointment in his mind.

"...hi," she replied while continuing to hide behind her hand for a few seconds.

Not put off in the least, Centrius' mouth parted until she could see his fangs again - she remembered that like her, he'd been born without tusks. There was a sense of familiarity there that felt appropriate - he wasn't gushing over her as if he was smitten, but it was very apparent that since they'd parted ways, he'd been waiting to see her again.

"I'm so glad you could make it," he said with a tone of not nervousness so much as unhidden relief.

Then she realized she'd remained sitting while he gave her the warmest smile she could imagine, and she felt a bit rude. When she stood up, she realized how little space there was between them and found herself almost boxed in. She wasn't used to having to look up at people of most races, and couldn't help but return his smile as she took a step forward. When she realized that he'd only extended his hand to shake, she suddenly felt very self conscious about her outstretched arms.

"I...am happy to see you - oh!"

Her mumbling was cut off, which was a good thing. But it was cut off by him rescinding his hand and switching to a hug as well, which was already making her blush way to early into the day. Unlike their first meeting, her hands were uncovered and she could feel the bulge of the muscles in his upper back when she hugged him, and the fact that she had to tilt her chin up to avoid pressing her nose and lips dangerously close to his neck left her own neck exposed. The fabric of his smock rubbed against it and she pulled away from him, almost jerking her head violently at the sensation that was a little too pleasant for comfort. Goddess...had it really been almost ten years since...?

He continued to grip the back of her arms, making her feel trapped. She was the one who usually trapped people and boxed them in; she was the one who stalked from afar and inspected her prey. When she found that he was physically capable of holding her - still gently, somehow - to look at her own outfit, she found herself feeling the strong sense that she'd been boxed into a corner. The fact that she kind of liked it felt so strange.

"You look great," he said despite ever having commented on her appearance the last time. Then again, circumstances were quite different the last time.

"You too," she replied while studying that face she couldn't forget, even if it had slipped her mind temporarily.

The two of them held on to each other just a little bit longer before sharing a laugh and letting go. None of the people walking by had noticed them, but it still felt a bit awkward to be hugging in public like that; she hadn't been raised that way and if his mother was anything like hers, then he hadn't either.

The way he kept looking at her made her question whether he was being too open with his joy at seeing her, or if she truly had become that closed off. "I'm so glad you came," he said as they stepped a bit further to the wall of the bait shop. "I honestly didn't expect to see you."

Although she felt the same, she tried to play it off. "Why would you think I wouldn't come?" she asked coyly.

He smiled and looked down again, not quite boyish but as close as someone such as him could probably look to it. "Well...Shari, this might sound silly to you, but I felt a bit shy when I first asked you to come. I mean, we'd just met, and we both work jobs that prevent us from staying in contact with other people in the long term. So then I asked you to meet me across the ocean in another city after three months time...I had convinced myself that I was foolish to wait here."

Before he'd even finished talking, she was already laughing politely. "Oh my goddess, I'm so glad you said that so I don't have to," she chortled while almost losing her balance and falling in to him. It was embarrassing, once again; she'd once balanced across an arcane beam the width of a pencil that was laid between two mountain tops when pursuing a runaway Dalaran mage, and there she was almost tipping over from laughing in front of a bait shop. Playing it off, she let him hold her by the arm for balance and enjoyed the squeeze of his hand again before settling down. "But we're both here; we both kept our promises."

"That we did; it seems we worried over nothing. But listen, look over there," he replied while pointing toward a somewhat busy wooden restaurant with carved dwarven architecture. "I just had a long ride and a big argument with my hotel since they rented my room out and can only watch my luggage-"

"No!" Sharimara half laughed and half gasped while covering her mouth with her hands. "You're not being seris!"

He inspected her grin for a moment and then let out a half exasperated sigh of his own. "Loa, the same thing happened to you because of all these veterans of the Fifth War, didn't it?"

"It did! Is every place in this city booked tonight?"

"I'd reckon a guess that everything is. But listen, I'm beat-"

"Oh, I'm sorry! You were saying that!"

"Don't be sorry, we're both in the same boat here. But I was going to offer you some greasy, fatty dwarf food that is probably the unhealthiest option available."

Sharimara had already begun walking toward the place, bumping into him to nudge him into walking. "Which means it's also the tastiest. Come on, I'd like to sit down and gorge myself, too."

The two of them followed each other inside the restaurant down the ramps from the bait and tackle shop, and could already how crowded the place was. Booty Bay was huge, a metropolis even, but unlike the spires of Orgrimmar or the caverns of Ironforge, it mostly consisted of one story buildings piled floor to ceiling on a series of wooden platforms ringing the cove. There were at least four levels plus a more urbanized, less commercialized series of slums on top of the cliffside overlooking the rest of the city, forming a sort of horseshoe shape of crowded, cramped and sometimes dark city of wood.

The dwarf restaurant was one such example: tucked around a corner and behind a clothing retailer, Sharimara noticed that they could no longer see the bay when they joined the crowd of people standing and eating out front. The place was awash with soldiers wearing almost every tabard except those of the Sentinels, Forsaken and Steamwheedle itself - the only three 'groups' (two nations and one organization) to have stayed out of the horrendous Fifth War. Tension had lessened after fifteen years, however, and both orcs and humans were behaving politely with one another again, though most of the groups of friends appeared to be monoracial.

After having taken a number for brunch - the two of them would have to wait a bit longer for a table that had enough leg room - they found a little corner created by the end of the restaurant and what sounded like the wall of an engineer's shop on the other side, though it wasn't accessible from the covered pathway they were on. Leaning up against it, they tried to at least catch up on the latest once they rejoiced in the fact that they'd both kept their promise.

"So tell me about this Northrend job you mentioned before the hostess took our names," Centrius asked while the two of them waited.

"Well...I mentioned that it's in the Grizzly Hills and Icecrown, right?"

He hummed and nodded. "You're going to fight the Heavenly Guard, then, aren't you?"

"That's right, but not with the Forsaken or the Alliance; Steamwheedle has been hired by the Forsaken, and they need someone who can drop behind enemy lines to gather Intel."

"It sounds right up your alley - and as far as I know, the mogu don't use snares," he said with a poker face that would have made Stickshift envious.

In fact, she didn't even realize that the trapper was poking fun at her until his mouth began to crack into a smile. "What - excuse me, that was not indicative of my usual success rate!" She punched him on the arm lightly in response. Were it anybody else, it might have been right in the face, but there was a sort of light, almost fluffy tone to his words that told her he knew what she was saying was true, and she settled for pursing her lips while he calmed himself down. "I'm going to get you back," she warned.

"I have no doubt that you will," he chortled again before locking eyes with her. Like before, it wasn't intense, but there was something about his gaze that would cause her to worry if she was staring at him too long or not. "But if you're going behind enemy lines, then I'm guessing you'll be sworn to secrecy," he added thoughtfully.

"The goblins call it radio silence. For over a year I'll need to be in communication only with a contract officer from the Forsaken and my Steamwheedle recruiter, just in case things go wrong. It's my kind of work, actually." Just then, she realized that she'd been talking about herself far more than she was used to. He seemed to have an excellent talent for flipping the conversation away from himself, which was usually her role in conversation. "What about you? All you mentioned before the hostess came to us was that you're leaving town in six days."

He rolled his eyes and gained that exasperated expression again. Locks of medium blue hair spilled in front of his shoulder as he did, threatening to distract her from his answer for a few seconds. "...in Outland, actually. The fungal infestation on Hellfire Peninsula has escalated into a full blown invasion - the Kirin Tor are suggesting that the fungal giants have actually evolved a sort of sentient hive brain."

Sharimara shook the stars away from her head to focus. "Loa, I heard about that...the Dark Portal has actually been closed by a joint Alliance and Horde effort. Nobody can go in unless they're military personnel from a recognized faction, and nobody can go out until the magi can confirm that said individual has immunity to the fungi spores. Trolls and dwarves of all varieties are automatically on that list - the former can regenerate from the infection and the latter are simply too tough to succumb to it."

"It's serious stuff, and right after both the Cenarion Circle and the Earthen Ring did so much work stabilizing the core and the magnetic fields of that planet. So there's this mad rush to enlist help and sustain Outland, and they don't have time to chase down small time fungal infestations, which is why - surprise - contractors," he explained while motioning to both her and himself. "I'll be in Hellfire, trying to keep local villages free of spores that would transform them into copies of the fungi."

"So it seems that we're both about to go on missions to hostile territory locked out from the rest of the universe," she sighed, feeling the mental exhaustion of a life of adventure once she was able to relax. She studied the face of her companion for the day and saw that same exhaustion that she knew all too well. "Did you happen to regain contact with your daughter during the past three months?" Sharimara asked. "Does she know you're leaving?"

Centrius' smile faded a bit, and she felt guilty for having asked. "No...it's been many years. And since I know she and her husband are civilians, unlike me, I never worried about them to get serious enough about tracking them down. It would take years even to get a lead, most likely - they're nightsabre trainers for the Sentinel divisions in remote areas and are also on the move."

"It could take three yea...yes, it could take a long time," she replied, feeling sad for the estranged single dad.

As always, he flipped the conversation back onto her so casually that she didn't even realize her emotional walls were coming down until he had her talking. "And what about you? Do your siblings, nieces and nephews know that you're going to Northrend?"

"Nobody knows I'm going; even if they tried to find out through the cartel, it's classified information due to the whole radio silence thing," she replied, feeling a sense of sadness infect them both. "And I haven't reached out; I've just been too...busy, I guess. It's been decades since they last heard from me, and I don't even know where everyone in the extended family scattered to. We might be half elves, but a few decades is still a long time."

For the first time, there was a lull in the conversation just before the hostess called their names. Both of them were a little blue in the mood until Centrius reached forward and laid his hand on her shoulder. Even through the cloth of her blouse, there was a pleasant heat from the sensation of his rough hands on her skin, and it actually caught her off guard. She tilted her chin up to see him, mouth slightly agape as he pulled her a little closer.

"Shari...tomorrow, you're being shipped off to certain doom, as am I after six days. We're hired fighters, adventurers in every sense of the word; we drift from conflict to conflict and keep the world safer for the other ninety nine percent of the population. But..." His voice trailed off and when he led her toward the restaurant, the way he smiled wryly caused her to mimic him when she didn't yet understand how his words could be positive. "...we still need to live and unwind. Every hotel is booked but we're in one of the wildest cities on Azeroth. These could be our last days in this life; let's just ignore the world and enjoy them while we can."

A big, wide grin broke out across her lips at the way he spoke of certain doom so casually. It wasn't that they were fearless; she tended to think anyone who claimed to be afraid of nothing as a liar. But there was a certain resignation to fate that one gained by constantly risking death for a living, and she knew - with absolute certainty - that he understood it as well as she did. She heard it in the low pitch of his voice, saw it in the way his sincere smile wasn't exaggerated or over the top, felt it in the way he could speak about the lack of communication or long term family relations without simply shutting down or becoming depressed. They were two individuals who simply couldn't rest, and yet there they were, with a day of rest to spend together.

Shrugging and leaning into his arm as he led her inside for brunch, she found herself able to relax while on vacation for the first time in years, worries about work and her lack of a personal life flowing out of her mind. "Thank you, Cent. Sometimes I need to hear that from someone else," she sighed as they ducked their heads to enter.

And he was right; she was glad to admit that. As the two of them sat down for brunch, she finally found herself able to relax enough to stop worrying and just focus on the present time they had there in front of them.


	6. Chapter 6

Just like the receptionist at the Steamwheedle lodging had claimed, Booty Bay was a city full of things to do and sights to see. Hours fled by and Sharimara found herself shocked at how soon dusk approached, seeing as how neither she nor Centrius had fallen into discussing their pasts or even overtly personal topics after brunch. Up and down they strolled along the multiple levels of the open port, window shopping for items they never planned on buying and stopping to watch every street performer or mentally imbalanced soapbox speaker. More than once they found themselves sprawled out on a bench, laughing at jokes they might not even remember by the next day but had found funny at the time all the same.

More importantly, she found herself able to relax once they'd spent a good few hours together. It wasn't immediate, it wasn't total and it wasn't enough to fundamentally alter her personality, but at least around him, on that day, she felt safe enough to let her walls come down just a little bit and to speak without thinking (most of the time). He was so free with himself that she felt envious, and trying to imitate his lack of concern over how his honesty would be understood was almost fun.

Just as the evening began, they'd begun to walk along the third of Booty Bay's four wooden levels lining the cove; from their vantage point, they could clearly see a good deal of the buildings on the other side, and she enjoyed quizzing him on how much he could remember about each building - he'd spent a measure of time in the city, but it was very, very long ago. Across from them was what appeared to be a small clinic, though it had already been locked up for the night when they saw it.

Sharimara linked her arm with his, giving his bicep a little squeeze in the crook of her arm. She was under no illusion about what this was; they were both attractive people and had a family connection, but this was only the second time they'd met. But it was fun, and putting that fun in perspective made it all the more enjoyable. Maybe a century before, when she'd been a young woman, she'd been able to walk closely to guy friends without things going further, and if that was as far as things went with Centrius, she was still happy. And if they did go further-

"I was born there, you know," he said while pointing toward the clinic, breaking her train of thought. "Me and both of the kids. It's an Argent Crusade charity hospital."

The two of them leaned a little further over the railing so she could get a better look. She wanted to press a little further seeing as how little he'd spoken compared to her, but was wary of opening any old wounds. "Right, you mentioned that you were born here but didn't spend much time in the city. But the Explorer's League is a long way...why did you come all the way out here?"

Thwarting her plans to avoid the painful without even realizing it, he answered with an alarming calm that she couldn't even comprehend. "Well, their mom - goddes light her path - wanted them to be born around a proper midwife. She'd left her tribe just like my dad had, so turning to them for help wasn't an option, and I guess...well, the Explorer's League was run by the Nesingwary family even back then, and they just didn't have the facilities for child birth. Still don't."

He continued to stare at the hospital wistfully, as if it barely even hurt him to do light tropical breeze came and went, blowing around the long blue locks on his shoulders and only adding to the free yet controlled contradiction that seemed to define him as a person. For her, it was confounding: to be open and free yet in control seemed so impossible that it was almost silly to suggest it, and yet there was an example of it in the form of the man on her arm. What he'd mentioned seemed almost sacred - she knew from experience how much such memories hurt - and she wasn't entirely sure if she was welcome to intrude.

He did bring it up without her asking...would it be inappropriate?

She thought about it. She didn't think twice. "Cent...you mentioned your dad's tribe..."

Pulled back into the present without resistance, he continued to gaze at the hospital but spoke to her clearly and lucidly. "Skullsplitter. He was a jungle troll, but not a member of the Horde like your dad was. And my wife was, too."

"It must have been very hard for them both," she replied cautiously, choosing every word carefully like a chess match that only she was playing.

"Yeah, it was at the time. But that's life; we're in the modern world now. Loyalties no longer matter based on race, and even the Alliance have some orcs with them. Only a few groups of people have remained entirely closed off - the Skullsplitter being one example. And, lo and behold, their level of technology is the same as it was back when the Twin Empires ruled the world. They still collect rainwater in pools to drink and wash with." After snorting in disapproval at his own thoughts, he pulled away from the railing and leaned into her. "Bah. I'm rambling."

"No, not at all! You've barely said a word about yourself because you just keep me talking all the time!"

He grinned at her cheekily. "And yet you give away even fewer personal details than me," he replied, garnering a laugh from her so naturally that she even let her usual instinct to retort slide. "Come on now, the night has just started. It's too early for me to be flooding you with my depressing stories. I passed a place on the way to meet you that was...somewhat interesting." A coy smile was the only hint he gave her, and although he led her away from the railing, he stopped short of pulling her behind him without telling her of their destination.

"Well? Tell me!"

"First off, don't think ill of me, because I don't usually go to these places, but...there was a small club that caters to taller people. It isn't an absolute rule, but there aren't really any goblins or gnomes in there, which means no risk of stepping on anybody. It doesn't seem that exclusive, either."

The way his eyes shone with hope warmed her even as she felt a measure of anxiety well up inside of her. "Oh, Cent...I've never danced in public before," she chortled. Immediately, she felt worried that she was being too negative, and as much as she did feel awkward about going to a club with no intention to dance, her heart fluttered at the idea of someone asking her to go. This time, she didn't berate herself internally for letting it flutter.

"Oh, it's easy - I'm not that great of a dancer myself, but it's about having fun! Plus, if it's a bunch of other large people like us, I doubt we'll be expected to keep us the pace."

Anxiety mixed with excitement at the thought of maybe, just maybe, being confident enough to go with him. Fighting warlocks and sea witches, she could do; but public places full of live music and dancing had always scared her. And the thought of that, along with the company of a person she trusted not to laugh at her, fought hard against her inclination to decline and spoil the evening.

"Cent, it's just that...I'm so tall. I've danced at birthday parties and weddings with my family, and that was a hundred years ago. But the dance floors are never big enough, the ceilings are never high enough, the people never spaced out enough...and I can't relax because I just think the end result will be people laughing and me either throwing them off the top of the building or having to walk out of the place with my head down."

"I know exactly how you feel; it was always the same issue with me. But that's the beauty of this place - it's owned by a Darkspear fellow who designed the ceiling with the tribe in mind, and the space is huge." He pulled her a little closer to him, not in a sultry way so much as if he were trying to share some secret. "And if anybody laughs at you, we'll throw them off the top of the building as a team."

Only for two people like them would throwing people to their doom on the asphalt be humorous. In truth, her anxiety hadn't been that great to begin with; she just didn't like going to clubs, nor did anybody in her family drink alcohol - it was one of the few Hearthglen traditions she maintained even after so many decades of separation. Coupled with the way Centrius seemed so confident that everything would be fine, she felt like she simply couldn't refuse.

"Alright...I'll go with you and see," she laughed, and the two of them begin the walk toward the place as he tried to find his way back. "But please let me wait until I'm ready. Like, don't make a show of offering me your hand or anything."

"No pressure, by the night, no. That would be an asinine thing to do!"

Laughing and joking the whole way, Sharimara could tell that he was intentionally trying to get her to loosen up. To be fair, it did work to a great extent and by the time they'd found the place up on the top level of the city, waited in line and gained entry after bribing the ogre bouncer, she'd almost managed to control her heart rate.

Once inside, a measure of the anxiety returned. The club was definitely large enough, and the dance floor was simply enormous by the standards of Booty Bay. For the patrons, however, it was just right. A large amount of jungle trolls and one or two forest trolls were either inhaling pure oxygen on the couches or even on the dance floor; the backflips many of them performed were unrestrained as the two story building was open all the way to the ceiling save a second floor of balconies rimming the edges of the room. Tauren, draenei, ogres, taunka, worgen in wolf form and even a few vrykul were there, mingling and speaking Common as if all was well. Even the Alliance tabards sported by the draenei and the Horde tabards worn by most of the tauren didn't seem to cause problems.

But more than anything...Sharimara felt normal. She was far from the largest person in the room, and standing next to Centrius, she felt like she could blend in. Having grown up in Ratchet and spent a century doing jobs in lands mostly held by the Alliance, she was used to being stared at and commented upon by short people all her life. Were she to mingle with her father's race a little more she might have felt normal, but lifespan issues prevented that: she couldn't bear the heartbreak of losing any more people. As a half elf, she'd still likely live almost half a millennium total, and pureblooded trolls lived about half a century; she didn't want a bunch of friends who were dying on her all the time.

Stop, she thought to herself. Relax.

Centrius led her over toward the bar, where to her surprise the chairs all fit her comfortably and she wasn't forced to squeeze in elbow to elbow with the other people. The dance floor was busy but not crowded, and the two of them had a perfect view from where they sat next to each other. Due to both shyness and her comfort in his presence, she did scoot her chair right up next to his and leaned against his big, round shoulder as they watched the other big people bust their slow, heavy moves.

"See?" Centrius asked loudly over the cover band playing outdated Elite Tauren Chieftan tunes she remembered from her childhood. "This isn't so bad, right?"

"It's fine; thanks for convincing me to come," she replied just as loudly. "I like how the lights are so dim; I don't feel like everyone is watching me."

Just then, a Darkspear woman working the bar leaned next to them. "What'll de two of ya have, now?" she asked in accented Common.

Before Sharimara could answer, Centrius leaned back for both of them. "Two of the strongest tropical punch you have, but dry for both," he ordered.

Sharimara looked to him, almost feeling a little embarrassed. "Cent, you don't have to do that for me."

"I want to do it. What's good enough for you is good enough for me. Come on now, watch that ogre wearing a white tuxedo with no undershirt. That's a guy who doesn't care what people think."

Admiring the way Centrius so casually accepted the change to his drink for her sake, she took a good few seconds before turning back to the dance floor. "Nobody's laughing," she said while suppressing a laugh herself.

"They have no reason to; we're all here to just enjoy ourselves."

The bartender arrived with their drinks, which were chilled and non alcoholic as requested. Both of them took a few sips before switching drinks and then switching back again, enjoying the ability to relax and finally blend in.

It actually was a lot better than Sharimara had expected. People of the various races all danced in groups, one on one and a small crowd had even formed at one end where numerous people who may or may not have been on drugs all threw their hands in the air. Although past quests had require her to stake out clubs and dance halls in the past, she almost always did so from outside a window or while shadowmelded in the corners (or, even better, when hanging from the ceiling). In her very rare days or even weeks off she mostly busied herself in training or seeking gossip on the latest in the underworld of bounty hunting and contract killing, sitting in the corners of the seediest taverns where the only dancers were paid by the minute. A place like this was anathema to her; the fewer people who knew who she was or where she was at any given time, the better.

But on that night...things felt right. Centrius put his arm around her shoulder, yet still acted with such nonchalant confidence that she actually found herself enjoying it. So rare was it that she could feel like a normal person and not a warden that she actually found herself counting the years since she'd last had a friend for longer than a few days or even sat down in a restaurant without a disguise. Not only was she in a busy transit city full of distracted travelers she'd never have to see again, but the setting was also anonymous enough that she could forget s out everything else. The way the darkness was just enough for her to know she could see better than everyone else, the way the few light sources by the ceiling were covered in different colored neon lenses, the way the low drum beat vibrated ever so slightly in the floorboards...all of it mixed together to create an atmosphere that just felt so natural, so calm, so...

"Mmmm," she hummed low in her throat when she realized that Centrius had laid his hand on the back of her neck at least a few minutes before.

The move was so fluid that she hadn't even noticed at first, and he made no attempt to escalate things. Truth be told, he almost seemed as if he didn't realize he'd done it. She could tell by the way his thick palm kneaded the muscles on the back of her neck, the way his fingers massaged her hide so well...she should have been politely leaning away to put some distance between them while retaining a sort of friendly closeness. Why was she leaning toward him instead?

In any other place, she might not have noticed it; feeling like a giantess wherever she went caused a certain measure of distortion in the way she perceived the world. When surrounded by all the members of these specific races, however, she found it much easier to recognize at least part of why this worked out.

Centrius was _strong_.

The statement would seem meaningless for many other people, she supposed; he was bigger than her, so he'd naturally be stronger. But for an enormous half elf , that was significant. One of her single biggest hang ups about relationships was the size difference. Because of her lifespan, she'd always need to find a partner who wouldn't die of old age before she even had a single grey hair; that immediately cut out the possibility of long term relationships with pureblooded trolls, as well as ogres and taunka (not that she could accept a member of the latter two races...no offense to them). That left her with elves and draenei, and again, the latter just wasn't her preference due to their literally alien appearance. She quite fancied the high elven look - masculine but not hairy - but then height was an issue: most of them only came up to her chest. Night elven men were taller but still not quite enough, and most of them were as hairy as an orc.

And so, she was always left with partners that were much shorter than her, as well as anxieties about people giving odd stares to the big man, bigger woman couple. Of course, a significant part of her relationship problems stemmed from her profession, but she'd left her career aside at least twice to try her hand at marriage, and had been burned both times. But the size issue was a part of it, even when both of her failed marriages were to strapping night elven men.

She turned to look at Centrius. Of all the men she'd allowed that close to her, he was the only one bigger than her, and judging by how much force she felt behind his grip even when relaxed, he was stronger. He'd obviously taken after his Skullsplitter father in terms of stature, and she remembered how small she'd felt the first time he'd hugged her at New Theramore. The way he continued to rhythmically work the back of her neck with his fingers was almost hypnotic, and coupled with the very light scent of cologne and musk she noticed on his hair and shoulder, it provided for a more intoxicating experience than had she asked for an alcoholic beverage.

Eventually he noticed that she was staring at him and turned back to see her as well. In his eyes she found not a hint of hesitation or sheepishness, unlike her when it came to matters of the heart, but she found no opportunism either. Had he leaned in right there, then she would have responded in kind, but he didn't seem to be in a hurry.

"Have you changed your mind about the dance floor?" he asked innocently.

Lips almost ready to pucker, she gave him a more intense stare for a few seconds but found him more cogent than her. When she regained a semblance of her senses, she registered what he'd said and looked between him and the crowd of partiers again.

"Yes...most definitely," she replied while sitting up and snatching his hand that had been kneading the back of her neck.

Abandoning their unfinished fruit drinks, she led him onto the dance floor and felt the sensation of being in the middle of it all for the first time. She could feel the beating of the drum much more strongly from there, and hearing his words became much more difficult over the din of the wind and string instruments. The lights affected her vision much more than they had at the bar, but she didn't mind; the interference with her sight made catching the glow of his eyes all the more fun.

Without any cue, Sharimara laid her hands around his neck and began trying to imitate the dance she'd watched her oldest sister and the woman's husband do a hundred and ten years or so before. Though her moves were choppy and unpolished after so much time spent away from such environments, she was shocked by how much she didn't care about such details. She hadn't consumed a drop of alcohol and yet when she saw the way Centrius cared so little about how he moved (and he hadn't lied when he mentioned he wasn't a great dancer either), she found it just as easy to cast off her inhibitions.

The two of them found ample space as they circled each other, only lightly brushing against other couples or groups of people a few times. Time no longer mattered and they danced on into the night, watching a few more couples join the floor and a few band members take a break only to be replaced by backup musicians. She loosened up, flashed her fangs when laughing and had found her groove, even when Centrius dipped her without warning.

"Hey! Be careful!" she laughed almost hysterically as she felt herself hovering just above the dance floor, helpful for the first time since her early childhood as she hung in his arms.

"If I drop you, you have my permission to slap me!" he laughed right back.

Just to make a point, he held her there, horizontally over the floor until she play hit him on his thick chest before he finally let her back up so fast that she fell into his arms. Instead of springing to a defensive stance like she was so used to, she let her body fall against his, reveling in the way her deep indigo mane fell over her face and the way he blew it away for her. She griped his bicep and tried to push against his arm in retaliation, and wasn't disappointed in herself when she found that his arm absolutely wouldn't budge unless he wanted it to.

Pressing herself right up against him, she felt a rush of energy as she finally got him. His eyes grew wide and he snorted a bit of air in surprise when she curled up in between his arms and stood on her tippy toes like she had once before. Determined to let herself be free, she fought past that intoxication again when she accidentally got a whiff of his scent and forced herself to place her lips close enough to his ear for him to hear her over the music.

"Spin me," she whispered loudly - if that was a thing - before releasing him and grinning as if she'd done something wrong.

She didn't have to ask twice, whisking her toward him like a coil, he quickly unfurled her and let her spin out. They held hands tightly even at the end of her spin, and when the room turned in circles around her she could have sworn she was flying.

Right into other people.

"Shit!" Sharimara cried as she nearly knocked over both a tauren and a draenei wearing the tabards of war veterans of their respective factions.

But she didn't knock them over. Instead, she knocked the tauren into a second draenei and the draenei into a second tauren, causing a few of their comrades just off the edge of the dance floor to spill drinks all over their tabards. Even on such a large dance floor, the increased number of people joining the crowd of revelers had eaten up the empty space. The hooved individuals all caught themselves, looking around in confusion as they tried to realize what happened.

As if on instinct, Centrius pulled her back to him and gripped her arms as multiple pairs of eyes looked back to the two of them and then to their cross factional interlocutors. And as amassed groups of veterans of the Fifth War who she'd literally just shoved into each other began a sort of staredown, the music was cut and she could have heard a pin drop.


	7. Chapter 7

Even though the neon lenses continued to filter out the dim light, the music didn't start back up. People from the dance floor to the bar and even up to the balconies all leaned forward to see what had caused the stunning silence, only adding to the tension due to all the prying eyes. In the far corner of the club sat the only short couple - a gnome with a pointy hat and a homely looking goblin - who quite literally dropped a pin as the odd interracial couple knit a rug in the middle of a jungle troll nightclub for absolutely no good reason. The pin echoed like a waterfall in the silence, but nobody took any notice.

Quite by accident, the two offended sides who Sharimara and Centrius had knocked over coalesced into two distinct groups as they inspected their tabards. Tauren all mooed about their ruined war veteran outfits while draenei lamented the material waste of lost alcoholic beverages, and everyone seemed to have an axe to grind.

Somebody coughed inadvertently as the musicians on the stage even stood up to get a better view, and slowly but surely the two sides began to realize what happened. Tauren and draenei alike sent dirty looks toward the two biracial individuals before glaring at each other. Their respective tabards spoke of years fought in one of the worst wars the planet had ever seen, a war that was still fresh in the memories of some. Sides had switched several times during the war but suffice to say that the individuals on both sides there in the club could have both fought against and supported each other at various times during the conflict itself. The acrimony was palpable.

Taking the lead, Sharimara tried to speak up first. "We're...awfully sorry about this-"

"Damn right you should be sorry!" a tauren woman wearing a ruined tabard blurted out. "The Horde pays serious money for the cloths celebrating our victory. This could cost a hundred gold to wash!"

Centrius tried to intervene next. "Well, hold on now-"

"A hundred gold for a beer stain?" Sharimara asked angrily, unable to tolerate the blatant money grab.

The draenei who had been splashed by beer was less accommodating. "What do you mean your victory? In which war was that in?" she asked. "Because your faction certainly didn't accomplish did key squat in the Fifth War!"

"Hey, come on now, we don't need to bring politics into this," Centrius said coolly with a smooth wave of his hand.

The tauren just glared at him. "You have no room to talk, you clumsy halfbreed. Pick a side."

Without any escalation at all, Sharimara felt her blood pressure hit the roof. "Hey! Don't talk to him like that!" she yelled louder than everybody while taking a step forward.

"Shari, just don't worry about it," Centrius tried to reason.

The draenei woman wouldn't hear any of it. "No, let's worry about it! My victory tabard is ruined!"

"Your victory tabard?" the boyfriend of the tauren bellowed while stepping forward. "Just who the hell do you think you people are?"

"You people?" the draenei's boyfriend exclaimed in an open challenge. "What do you mean by you people?"

The tauren man didn't loom impressed. "Oh, don't give me that race card rubbish, that junk is tired."

"You still owe me a hundred gold," the tauren woman said to Sharimara menacingly while shaking her furry fist.

She shouldn't have done it. As a professional, she knew to always keep a low profile and avoid drawing attention to herself. And, more than anything, Sharimara didn't believe in hurting people for free when she could charge high fees for it. Whether it was the fact that the nightclub was still an unfamiliar environment for her, or simply the way the tauren arrogantly shook her fist in Sharimara's face, the reaction was guaranteed. Her sense of honor smudged, a sort of animalistic instinct at the very base of her nature hit back.

Grabbing the tauren woman by the wrist, Sharimara shoved all her weight forward and forced the bovine to punch herself in the muzzle.

"Mmmmooo!" the woman cried as she stumbled and fell to the floor. It wasn't a particularly forceful blow, but everyone except for the two biracial friends was at least a little bit tipsy and the woman had tumbled right into the chairs on the edge of the dance floor to boot.

The tauren's boyfriend was quick to react. "You did it now, bitch!" he growled while stepping forward to grab Sharimara by the ear.

Though she was more than capable of defending herself - and even preferred the situation to unfold that way - she was pleasantly surprised as well as flattered when Centrius took exception to the insult hurled at her.

"Watch your mouth!" the trapper growled in a surprisingly deep, angry voice as he moved forward and literally grabbed the bull by the horns.

Twisting the tauren over, he threw the furry man into some sort of a hip toss that sent him barreling right into the two draenei who had heretofore looked rather pleased with the direction the conversation had been taking. Caught completely off guard, the hooved Alliance couple was knocked straight across their table by the Horde man turned projectile, sliding even more drinks onto the other draenei couples who had been seated there. The ruination visited upon all their tabards would surely cost at least one hundred and one gold, if not one hundred and two.

"Damnit!" grunted a large blue man who had been caut entirely unaware due to the distraction provided by his two lady friends each sitting on one of his knees, both of whom looked like twins.

"My eye!" cried one of the twins as the whole tablecloth accidently became wrapped around her head.

"What the shit!" screamed a mage whose folding chair folded her into a sandwich.

A few more yelled in their own language, pulling more of their blue skinned companions to the dance floor. Expecting the worst, an entire line of tauren braves followed suit, causing tempers to already flare. When the tauren who Centrius had tossed over the table shoved a draenei while standing back up, all hell broke loose.

"Bar fiiiiiiiiight!" an ogre idiot on one of the balconies cried, leaning forward on the railing so heavily that he and the other people next to him broke it with their weight. Tumbling toward the floor, they hit the gathered draenei and tauren war veterans like gigantic hail stones, only adding to the confusion.

Hooves stomped and fists flew, and people of all races and factions either pushed each other against the walls in an attempt to get out of the way or simply joined the fray. Those pushing against the walls quickly grated on one another's nerves, and soon enough even the vrykul had gotten involved and Sharimara could have sworn she even saw a few tauren and draenei fighting other members of their own races. A Darkspear douchebag, instead of doing his job and trying to subdue the crowd, adjusted his black bouncer shirt and began taking selfies in front of the near riot with his gnomish manufactured hand camera.

From the corner of her eye, Sharimara saw the original tauren woman she'd forced to self punch herself approaching. Somehow she'd broken between the sea of hooves and was jabbing her finger in the warden's direction. "You and me, bat ears!" the furry woman shouted as a few of her friends joined her.

"Not if I can help it!" added the draenei woman in the self described victory tabard. Rather than throttle each other, they both actually looked focused on Sharimara, and were leading a troupe of half a dozen other women right toward her.

The two companions stood shoulder to shoulder, but also backed up while seeking more space between them and their interlocutors. "Cent, do you have a moral opposition to hitting ladies?" she asked in Darnassian through the corner of her mouth.

Crouching low, he took a similar stance to her. "As the general rule, yes. But when said ladies are capable of knocking my head off, I'll begrudgingly make an exception."

"Stop backing up, you cowards!" the tauren shouted.

The two of them were rapidly running out of space. If they allowed themselves to be cornered, things would end badly for them - and that was the last thing Sharimara needed on what was basically her last night as a free woman before being shipped off to what amounted to a suicide mission across the ocean. Just as she braced herself to roundhouse the tauren in the face first and then let the chips fall where they may, she was interrupted by the absolutely shocked stares of her opponents and the sound of freely flowing rum.

"Shari, jump!" Centrius yelled from behind her, surprising her by how quietly he'd moved out of her field of vision. Doing what she was told, she jumped straight into the air and grabbed onto one of the chandeliers holding the dim, neon colored lights.

"That's cheating!" the draenei woman cried as she, her friends and all the tauren backpedaled to avoid the thick malt liquor flooding the dance floor.

From her vantage point, Sharimara was able to twist around and see what had happened: Centrius had knocked over a barrel of fermenting malt liquor the size of a kodo and had broken it all over the floor. He was clinging to the wall, holding himself up on a mounted candlestick with one hand and controlling the flor of the rum by a broken plank of the barrel with the other. Hooves skidded until all six of the women attacking them slipped and fell, even further soaking their oh so precious tabards in cheap alcohol.

What had been a near riot escalated into a full blown one, and the sheer amount of noise was deafening. Finally getting up off their asses, the handful of bouncers rimming the room began spraying canisters of pressurized quilboar urine in order to blind and choke the rioters, but to no avail. There were simply too many people who had decided to brawl rather than escape, and soon enough the bouncers were pulled into petty scuffles as well. A loud snap rang out and the balcony on the opposite side of the club broke, sending more people to the floor. So engrossed were they in their senseless violence that a few of them continued to hit each other in midair before crashing to the ground.

Swinging herself to the side, Sharimara leapt to a pillar in between the balconies and grabbed a mounted candlestick directly above Centrius. From there, she could lower herself down enough for him to hear her over the uproar.

"We need to get out of here - I grew up in a Steamwheedle city," she shouted. "The bruisers take this stuff very seriously-"

Her sentence was cut off by double doors slamming open and even more shouts. A spotlight shone inside and all the clubgoers began to fall, stumble or simply run away. Intimidating all the massive people at the club catering to tall people was a retinue of about two dozen Booty Bay bruisers, their diminutive forms clear from the way the rioters parted ways for them.

"Looks like you spoke too soon!" Centrius shouted while jumping up to cling to the pillar at the same level she was at.

From where they hung, they were almost near the ceiling and had a bird's eye view of the big mess. Despite being only about three feet tall, the goblin bruisers were brutal and vicious, smashing their heavy maces on the toes and hooves of the unruly patrons at a level too low for a counterattack to be mounted in such a small, cramped, dark place. Nobody dared to fight the little people back, and people pushed, shoved and trampled each other in an attempt to escape the nets of the goblins and renewed streams of quilboar piss sprayed by the irritated bouncers.

Finally collected herself and shifting into her objective mode, Sharimara began to look for an exit. If they were caught, they both might lose their next jobs and damage their reputations and careers, and she knew firsthand how unpleasant the inside of a prison cell could be. Thinking fast, she spied an access door on the side of the wall just a little higher than the awning of the interior balconies; it was open and she could see that it led to a sort of attic that was completely unlit. Judging by how Centrius had glowing silver eyes to match her glowing greens, she guessed that he'd be able to see in the dark just as well as she could.

"Follow me!" she shouted while leaping up toward the ceiling.

She met her mark, and found herself dangling from the air duct with her legs hanging two stories above the dance floor. Only when she'd pulled herself into the dusty attic did she turn around to see him. He was much heavier than her, and she worried that he might not be able to clear the jump.

Lunging toward her, he made it up higher than she'd expected and slapped his hands onto the aluminum passageway. For good measure she grabbed him by the wrists anyway, helping him crawl up even more quickly. Once he was inside she closed the previously open grating of the duct, noticing that none of the bruisers had thought to look at the ceiling as they busied themselves hauling rioters off the dance floor in nets.

Once inside, they found the attic much less spacious than the nightclub itself; if the central bar and dance floor had been designed with jungle trolls in mind, then the attic had been designed for people of human height at most. The two of them instinctively moved away from the air duct and creaked across the lint covered wooden beams, but they froze when footsteps rang from behind an access door across the other end of the attic.

Sharimara's ears twitched. "They're coming up the stairs - loa, why would the bruisers need to check the attic!"

"I see a door, but it's enchanted!" Centrius whispered to her urgently.

"What? Enchanted?" She looked to where he was pointing and noticed a glowing door that led out to the roof. The runes of a tauren shaman pulsated, and a lightning shield that appeared to be of a permanent nature caused electricity to surround the heavy steel door. "That's impossible, they would need a totem to imbue it with shamanistic magic!"

"It's on the other side; it's a new security system they pay shamans to set up in a few Horde towns," he explained. "It must have spread here."

Grinning at the new knowledge of security and escape routes, she reveled in the chance to test her skills in front of her companion. "Challenge accepted," she beamed without even bothering to explain the context to him.

Leaning forward, she focused all of her mana and casted her blink spell. The air pressure dropped significantly and she found herself out in the humid tropics of Stranglethorn Vale again. The roof of the nightclub faced toward the upper cliffs of Booty Bay, with the bay and the rest of the city itself on the other side. That particular portion of the cliff hadn't yet been claimed for more crowded slums, and it opened straight into a patch of jungle that was steep but isolated from the surrounding rainforest on the other side of the cliffs by its elevation. Sensing a perfect hiding spot when she saw one, she grinned again before turning back to see the door.

A tauren style totem that hummed with electricity stood directly in front of the door. Unlike the door itself which appeared to crackle with enough volts to stun an ogron, the totem only bore enough energy itself to sting a little.

She stepped back toward the exit. "Cent, I'm going to remove the totem now!" she called to him.

"Ready when you are," he called from the other side.

Punting the totem like a slightly stinging rugby ball, she knocked the item straight into the garbage laden alleyway between the club and the brewery right next to it, causing the lightning shield to fade from the door. She stepped out of the way just in time as the steel hinges snapped like twigs, the door flying off with an imprint of Centrius' boot pressed into it. He fell forward a step before she braced herself against him to help him stabalize.

Brought directly eye to eye, they stared at each other for a good few seconds as the access door inside the actic flew open behind them.

"The jungle!" Sharimara exclaimed lest they breathe into each other's mouths a little too long. "We need to lay low for a while!"

She didn't need to tell him twice. This time he leapt before her, clearing the distance yo the cliff and only sliding once as he climbed. Not to be outdone, she leapt even higher than him and backflips upwards onto the grassy surface just as he crawled his way up, and the two of them found themselves looking down onto the roof just as a group of bruisers and a bouncer burst out and began yelling about the broken door.

"This way! Come on!" she whispered into his ear, her heart pounding and her body energized as the two of them disappeared into the underbrush.

Further and further between the trees they crawled until they sat safely away from the view of anybody in the area, in a place where only birds could reach. The entire bay laid below them, and they collapsed into the grass next to each other panting and laughing.

After a few minutes they calmed themselves down, joking about the entire ordeal and complimenting each other on a job well done. The crash after the adrenaline rush helped them to eventually relax, and they watched the wide leaves of the palm trees above them sway as stars occasionally peeked down at them.

"Should we feel bad about that?" Centrius asked after a few moments of rest. "I mean...we kind of caused the whole thing, even if those jerks made the choice to escalate things."

Sharimara let out a little hoot. "Are you kidding? That was wild, everybody in town will want to come to this place now. They'll have to pay for the property damage, but they'll earn it all back when they become the most popular club in Booty Bay." Rolling over to get a better look at him, she felt her lips curl into an almost evil grin. "We just gave them the best advertising they could ask for."

When his eyes widened at her dark sense of humor, she felt her heart thump faster again for a few seconds. She was very aware of the fact that they were alone together, far from prying eyes and in a safe place where they could let their guard down. Goosebumps raised on her violet-blue skin, and she could have sworn that she saw some on his lavender hide as well.

Never shy but perhaps more restrained than she'd ever seen him, he returned her gaze but didn't roll any closer to her. "These are our last few hours as free people...we have no hotel rooms and we probably shouldn't show our faces until all those people are hungover or jailed in the morning," he said quietly. "This is probably the best place for us to be right now."

A sort of warmth washed over her stomach at the sound of him saying that, once again saving her from the need to do so. Comfortable and no longer self conscious, she raised her hand as if holding an imaginary drink glass and clinked it against his. "Here's to one hell of a way to spend our last night free," she replied.


	8. Chapter 8

There was only a light breeze that night in the Cape of Stranglethorn Vale, providing a pleasant coolness in the typical tropical heat. To feel it was difficult in the small clifftop jungle overlooking Booty Bay, however. Though the whole grassy thicket was small in overall area, the palm trees grew densely in the sparse, rocky soil and blocked out much of that coolness. Not that the humidity wasn't comfortable - it added to the sense of being on vacation, even if her vacation had been for a single day.

The breeze also moved the large fronds of the trees to sway enough to create a sort of miniature light show. Only glimpses of the stars above could be seen through the little triangles of black sky, dancing around as if to challenge them to follow the movement. Not that either Sharimara or Centrius could be bothered - not after one of the funniest and most engaging conversations she'd had in a long time.

Perhaps it was only her perception due to loneliness. For so long she'd been without friends; attachments were dangerous in her line of work. They could cause her to lose her nerve if she believed she had someone to return to, or cloud her objectivity when pressed to make a hard decision. But on that night as the two of them laughed and watched the moon shimmer over the waves in the bay, she found herself so comfortable that she almost forgot the path in life she'd chosen.

The two of them laid on their sides next to each other, resting on their elbows in mirror images of one another save for her frequent attempts to keep her feet on top of his (they'd already kicked their shoes off into the bushes). His feet were unusually hot, and despite the climate already being very warm the sensation of his hide against the soles of her feet made her laugh out loud. It was completely innocent, but there was a sense of closeness about it that would have caused her to feel violated had a third person spied upon them.

She shoved his shoulder down into the grass on the tail end of a debate about how they would have fared had he not doused the dance floor in rum. "Trust me, I'm an expert here; draenei stomping on your feet can nearly end a fight. It's even worse than being hit by them."

"If you say so, Shari," he chortled. His laughter was deep yet light, and had a music quality to it like an elf despite its baritone sound that ticked her ears.

"Oh, I say so." She stuck her chin out as if to challenge him, pursing her lips and wrinkling her sharp nose in the cheesiest, most immature way she could. Even if they were both over a hundred years old, it felt so good to let her guard down just a little and act as if she had not a care in the world.

For a moment, his gaze lowered and she noticed him looking at her chin instead of her eyes. She held position, wondering what was going through his mind. He flipped the conversation back onto her so often that it was a frequent thought; she almost wished she could climb inside of his head and figure out what he was thinking. At that moment in particular, though, it was driving her crazy. A part of her wanted to believed that he was thinking the same thing she was...leaning forward...seeing what it felt like when he kissed that chin, and pressed his upper lip into the skin just beneath her lower lip.

She stopped herself. From what she'd understood of his behavior, he wouldn't press her unless she took the lead in that department. And before she could, he dropped something in her lap that actually felt even more intimate.

"Shari...I want to ask you something, and I want you to answer me honestly," he whispered to her despite the fact that they were alone.

Excitement mixed with a measure of fear in her chest. For some reason. She couldn't shake the thought that he might finally press her for a satisfactory and honest answer as to why she'd tracked him down in the first place. Despite having hunted for the children of her mother's former neighbor for three years, it was a question that Sharimara herself didn't think she could answer.

Finding no reason to deny him even if it caused her nervousness, she nodded. "Anything, Cent," she replied.

Serious without being grave, he hesitated for the first time she could remember. "Tell me, then...why hasn't a woman like you settled down yet?" he asked sincerely. "I almost can't believe it."

At first, she worried he might have been making fun of her. Comparatively speaking, she thought he'd be a much bigger catch than her. "What's not to believe?" she asked him right back, raising a curious eyebrow.

He inhaled, and she found herself momentarily distracted by the way his smock heaved beneath his chest. "What I mean to say is...I find it hard to believe that nobody tried hard enough to get you to tie the knot by now," he explained. "You're beautiful; you're intelligent; you're confident to a fault; you're very good at what you do-"

"Cent..." she whined while facepalming. Her entire face began to heat up and she almost wished he had been joking due to the strong sense of being thrust into the spotlight again.

"Hold on now, let me finish. I'm not just kissing your ass here."

"Not that I'd mind if you did," she blurted out from behind her hand. She immediately froze thereafter, growing wide eyed as she tried to come to grips with the fact that it was her voice who had said that despite all common sense dictating that she shouldn't. "That wasn't me."

Shutting his eyes and trying not to laugh, he made a visible effort to spare her any embarrassment. "I heard nothing. But listen, okay? Whether you're willing to admit it or not, you know you're a very special person. And I know that I'm not the first person to tell you that - no way. So what is it, then? Are you so dedicated to the job that you just turn down every man who must be throwing themselves at you?"

The way he continued to look at her even when she lowered her hand from her face caused her to feel exposed...but not as much as she thought she would. It didn't make sense; her interaction with the world around her was based on keeping her walls up. Maintaining that status quo preoccupied her mind constantly and the thought of her comfort zone being invaded terrified her. Yet when she felt Centrius actively peeking over the top of her wall, knocking on her door and trying to lead her out, she didn't cringe and recoil the way she had so many times before around other people. It didn't make sense, but then again, so much of her own impulsive behavior around him confounded her.

He was waiting; she began to feel a bit rude. Choosing her words carefully, she tried to give him as much information as she felt she could without scaring herself so much that her walls heightened beyond her control.

"I guess you could say that, currently, I'm married to my profession," she sighed in an almost defeated tone as she dug up old misgivings for what might have been the first time. "I tried to leave it behind...twice. And just settle down into a relatively normal life, but it seems that I'm simply not cut out for normal life."

"What does normal mean, though? Maybe those guys just weren't able to keep up with you. Or, your personalities just didn't mesh. You shouldn't assume that things didn't work out because of you, or your personality, or whatever."

Because he continued to look at her so calmly, so naturally, so sincerely, she looked back at him. But that didn't mean that it was easy; she actually wished she could shrink and disappear, or simply turn invisible. "You think too highly of me. But you haven't seen as much of me as both of my exes did."

"Sometimes it's easier to lose sight of the forest from the trees when you're in the middle of it," he replied with a certainty she wasn't used to hearing from him. The causal undertone remained, but there was a decisiveness there that made her blush more than she felt she should have. Either his perception was totally off and he was denser than she'd felt he was all along, or he saw things in her that nobody else could. And as dreamlike as that seemed, a small, childish part of her hoed that it was true - in between a lot of mental squirming to simply avoid thinking about the subject.

Almost to her limit of exposure in front of a person she quite liked, she struggled to find a way to move the spotlight off of herself. In her desperation, she resorted to what she knew was a cheap shot. "Cent...if I ask you something now, will you answer me honestly?" she asked, concealing the twinge of guilt in her tone.

"I actually did eat the last macaroon at brunch this morning," he chuckled. "It wasn't the waiter like I claimed it was."

"You...no, that's not it!" she laughed back so hard that she almost oinked. "Come on, that doesn't count as my question!"

"Go on, then, do your worst."

The upbeat, open look in his eyes made her feel bad for her avoidance tactic again, and she hesitated for a few seconds before signing again and just asking. "You've obviously been single again for quite some time. I find it hard to believe that you could stay single that long when you..." She paused, fighting off that sense of her face heating up before he said it. Envy invaded her mind when she realized that unlike him, she couldn't dole out compliments without becoming shy and worrying that she'd reveal too much of her infatuation. "...you know. You're a good man."

Undaunted as always, he tilted his chin up toward the sky in mock arrogance. "A good man...that'll be my new handle," he said with a wry smile.

"Oh come on, you know I mean...more than that. Please don't make me say it."

Though he retained his smile when he turned back to her, he was merciful not to embarrass her into a corner. "You're as free as the birds up in the trees; there shan't be any force here."

"Thank you."

"As you should," he chortled, and she almost oinked again as she laughed along with him. "My wife passed away just over two decades ago. Prior to that, we'd been together for about forty years. I'm not in any rush, though she did ask me to remarry when she was on her deathbed, you know, so I would't be alone. I've been on a few dates with individuals at most, but it's never gone beyond that in the past twenty years."

"That's...well, that is a long time to be without anybody, but I'm not one to..." She stopped herself before exposing herself to even more questions, and mildly panicked as she tried to steer the conversation back in the right direction. "I mean, it really is a long time, but I can understand why it would be hard to move on."

"Oh, I wouldn't say I haven't been able to move on. Like I told you a few months back, I talk about it openly to help me move on. But when you meet the right person, the one that just fits to your personality so well, it's difficult to be with anybody again even after you've moved on. And so far, I haven't found the right one, even though I intend to honor my wife's wish."

Though his eye glistened just barely at the corner, he neither hesitated nor censored himself. He looked so free, so unrestricted, that she still had difficulty believing that a person who mostly lived the way she did could be so functional emotionally. Sure, she knew that normal people lived normal lives, but why could another drifter moving from quest to quest be so free about pain and she couldn't?

"Can I ask another question? And if it's too sensitive, please don't answer," she asked.

"I doubt that could happen at this point, but sure, go ahead."

"Alright...you mentioned that your wife was Skullsplitter, like your dad. Does that mean...?"

"That she was a full blooded, short lived jungle troll?" he asked rhetorically. "Yes, it does. Despite all the advice from pretty much everyone I knew, despite what my parents had always warned me about, I'm a half elf that married a troll. I made what some people call the lifespan mistake."

"I'm sorry...I don't view it as a mistake, but this still could be intrusive of me-"

"It's not, Shari, trust me. I really don't mind - in fact, I enjoy talking about it given the right setting and right person. Bottling things up inside will never yield a positive result."

_But what of the alternative_, she thought to herself. "You know, the relationship between my parents, and I guess your parents, worked out because our moms were born before the immortality of the night elves started; when it ended, they aged rapidly so our jungle troll dads matched them perfectly. But I guess the big, sad irony of us is that we're born between two worlds, but one world is inaccessible to us because it only leads to pain."

"Not true," he replied politely but with that same certainty in his voice. "There was pain, but there was so much joy as well. I met her when she was young and she grew up with me, from her late teens until her early sixties when she died in my arms. During that time people warned me of the inevitable - correct warnings, mind you - and how I'd end up heartbroken in the end. And as the years went by, I woke up every day and saw her ageing, I saw her health deteriorating and her hair turning greyer. And I was always the same, unageing as a person with even half elven blood tends to be."

Studying his face and finding herself confounded when he didn't appear to be lying to himself, she found the comfort to push further given how at ease he seemed, rather than shutting down in denial. "But where was the joy when you knew how it would all end? I'm sure you found it, but how? What was the secret when you were with somebody who you knew would die of old age while you were still young, leaving you to live for so long with only her memory?" she asked, the sorrow in her voice even greater than the sorrow in his.

For a few moments he fell silent, and she worried that her words had cut too deep. But the wistful look in his eyes that overpowered the small tear beading at the side spoke even louder, and as guilty as she felt for having pushed so far, she soon realized that that tear was by no means a sign of weakness or despair.

"Because there can be no joy without pain; and one of the biggest problems I saw in my friends' marriages is that they failed to understand that. They thought that relationships were supposed to be all smiles all the time, and that the bad times - whether they were arguments, or illnesses, or financial problems - were anomalies that detracted from the quality of the shared life. But the bad times are as integral a part of mortal relations as the good times. They're a part of life; that will never change. And it shouldn't change...because if we avoid those connections that we feel drawn to just because we fear what might happen, then we miss out on the beauty that could be."

He grew quiet for just a few seconds and smiled to himself as he blinked the tears away. It was touching to see, and for all her physical prowess, she couldn't help but sit in awe of the strength it must take to view the negative experiences in life in such a way. "As my dad used to say: by avoiding who we're drawn to, we can miss the pain, but then we must also miss the dance...that proverbial dance that makes up the more beautiful parts of life." He paused again to open his silver eyes, and slowly turned his head to see her. "Perhaps I sound a bit overly sentimental," he chuckled, mostly at himself.

"No...no, Cent, never ever," she replied, finding herself unable to laugh along with him. "It makes sense that...no matter what happens, we have to accept the bad alongside the good. Otherwise, we...just...shut down. And stop living."

Unable to continue, she stared down at the two inches of grass in between them as they laid next to each other. Her envy for his openness still couldn't quite push her to follow suit, and the closer to home the subject grew, the more she began to feel her walls rising. And she absolutely hated it; after so long, she'd met someone of a similar background, with a similar path in life, but in possession of a different outlook she much preferred to her own. But try as she might, she couldn't prevent the constriction she felt in her chest as she worried that he would begin to grow more curious about her past seeing as how she'd spurred him to discuss his.

Insightful to a fault, he continued to gaze upon her even when her downcast eyes fixated on the ground. "You sound like you bear quite a bit of that pain yourself," he said to her softly, not overtly pushing but obviously seeking a kindred spirit after he'd bore his soul to her.

Guilt rose up as she fought against her inclination not to reciprocate. "Yeah," she replied, shutting her eyes.

"Were your exes really that bad to you?" Centrius asked. There was more concern in his voice than simple objective curiosity. That sense of worry in his voice helped her to frame the discussion in the sense of her comforting him by talking, rather than the other way around.

"Not the first. We got divorced maybe...seventy years ago. He was just too attached to domestic life, and unwilling to get out and adventure. Our split was much easier since we both wanted it; we just parted ways and wished each other luck, and I have no idea where he is now."

"I take it that the second time around is the one that really hurt."

This time, Sharimara truly was unable to respond. Nodding in confirmation, she opened her mouth and tried to speak, but when her voice immediately cracked at the first syllable, she pursed her lips as the collision occurred inside of her. The walls rose toward the sky, and her fear tried to shut Centrius out from moving any closer. Desperation welled up inside as she feared losing the only opportunity she'd ever have to say it out loud; if that isolated little jungle wasn't the place, and Centrius wasn't the person, and her last day before being shipped behind enemy lines wasn't the time, then there was no place, nor any person, nor any time. This was the end of any sort of emotional introspection before she became zombified.

Slowly, he reached over and laid his hand on her shoulder. It was a pleasant touch - not from sexual arousal as was the case in previous instances, but from the feeling of closeness. That hand held down on her emotional wall, not forcing it down so much as preventing it from rising any higher. That strong hand held firm; had he wanted to force it down, he probably would have been capable of doing so, especially when she was at one of only three times in her entire life where she felt truly vulnerable. But there was no push, nor any show of force. The tension tried to swell, but she almost felt as if it had been stopped, holding its own ground but unable to toy with her any further.

"I'm sorry if that was a bit too personal," he whispered to her after she proved unable to do anything other than nod. "I didn't mean to pry."

Able to mentally collect herself as long as he held on, as long as he gave her that anchor, she found the nerve to lift her head up and look at him. Even when he'd shed a few tears over the woman who had made a widower of him, he hadn't looked as sad as he did when she'd found herself incapable of speaking. He had no idea what truly lied in her past, and she felt that he didn't need to; he read her well enough to know the sort of pain that was there. The fact that he seemed remorseful for having tried to simply provide her solace tipped her sense of guilt to a level that overpowered her fear.

"No…Cent, goddess no…please don't be sorry. I just…" This time when she quieted down, it was more due to her inability to find the right words. Her heart was raw and painful, but not in a way that scared her. The pain was something she could bear…but she experienced more difficulty articulating her fear. "…can I show you, instead of telling you?"

His eyebrows furrowed curiously, and she felt his attempt to probe her intention. There was no way he could, of course, and his lack of assumption helped her along. "Of course, Shari."

Slowly, she rose into a sitting position, but remained leaning into his arm as if she needed support along the way. He rose with her and put his arm around her shoulder, sitting right beside her and waiting silently as she slipped her hand into the pocket of her jeans.

Wedged inside was a thin wallet, the only item she hadn't left at the Steamwheedle lodging. She rarely carried anything in her pockets even when off duty, and when she did, she tried to keep it light. Only a few gold and silver coins and a banknote were inside the main pocket of her wallet, and the coins nearly spilled out as her hands visibly trembled. He didn't reach over to help her, however, which she was thankful for; had he tried, she would have found it patronizing. Slipped inside a side pocket was a roll of glossy squares, each one kept in a different section. Photographs, an old gnomish technology that even predated running water in much of Azeroth.

"Here," she whispered while unfurling the roll. "It's easier to just…show you."

The photos had been laminated and preserved via a process that she didn't quite understand, and the quality was rather high. The first was of her with her grey haired mother, Cecilia, in front of a modest stable at the edge of Ratchet in the Barrens. It wasn't the most relevant one to the point they'd been discussing – the point she'd never felt she could talk about with any other person she met – but it was an easy way to ease into it.

"I can tell that's your mom," Centrius whispered while inspecting the photo. "She has that same look that mine did – a person who you can just tell had seen millennia in this life."

"Yeah…she was the most amazing person I've ever known." Sharimara ran her thumb over her mother's grey locks with the azure streaks dyed in them, as if she were caring for her mother in the woman's final days all over again. That wound, however, had mostly healed. "And that's the riding school behind us…she was cavalry, similar to your mom. Our family owned a business selling herbs – they probably still do, but I cut off from my siblings too long ago to know if it's still around – but the riding school was something we opened together on the side. She taught outriders…in her free time. I let the school lapse, though, and it shut down. I think that's part of why I've never been back home…I can't walk in there. I…it just isn't possible."

"I know that feeling all too well…I was raised at the Explorer's League camp run by the Nesingwary family, but I haven't been back since my parents passed. Not when I'm just holding still in life, with nothing new to show."

Her spine began to tingle at his words, forcing her to straighten her posture. For a moment she nearly worried that he'd been a mind reader the whole time, but the way he looked at her so innocently told her that she'd simply found someone who could empathize. "That's it…that's exactly it. And until that times comes, I just…no. I will not go back. I can not go back."

He nodded, sharing her melancholy expression as the two of them looked at each other and then the picture of her mother again. Her heart rate increased as she turned to the next photo in the roll, her anxiety rising mildly despite their gradual progression. She forced herself on regardless, determined to use what could be the last and only chance to talk openly to someone other than her own shadow about what had happened.

The next photo was of a modest, Sindorei style home in the Ghostlands. Kaldorei style carved statues guarded the front fence, signaling that the occupants were not locals, but there were no people to be seen in the photo. The roll began to shake so much that the plastic creaked, and she tightened her grip to the point of straining her hand in order to stabilize it. Centrius squeezed her shoulder and pulled her a little closer to him in an effort to comfort her, but he waited as she worked to control her breathing and speak in a mostly even, if slightly wavering voice.

"This was the second household I tried to establish," she sniffled, and he offered her his last tissue so she could continue. "Thanks…ah…I don't have anything from my first marriage. It lasted maybe only twelve years and just fizzled…but I have this from the second time."

"And this was after you left home for good, I take it," he said, using such a calm, quiet voice that she almost felt her nerves settle down and rest a little.

"Of course…this was about two decades ago. Not that long ago…not. Not long ago." She stopped talking and shut her eyes again, cursing herself inside for her nervousness and apprehension. "I'm sorry…I want to talk about it. Please be patient…okay?"

"I don't mind waiting, no matter how long it is. Don't ever feel rushed."

"Okay. Yeah. Um…this was it. This was the house I tried to lay down…nobody in my family even knows I got married a second time. They don't know if I'm even still alive, to be honest."

_They don't know about her_, Sharimara thought to herself.

A thick, oppressive lump grasped her by the throat, constricting it from the inside and cutting off her supply of air. Her pulse raced so hard that she almost wanted to jump up and run in circles, anything to burn off the energy she didn't actually possess. Her eyes burned from the other side, and the muscles in her temples almost cramped as she tried to hone her vision. Heat rose as she tried to force that lump down, but it hit the pit of her stomach like a rock and tried to drag her into the depths of the planet, to smother and suppress her before she could speak what she'd buried for so long.

Tears fell, and she openly muttered a curse when the droplets trickled on her thumbs. The fight became more than personal as she felt her walls closing in, threatening to collapse and bury her along with the memories. Her anchor was no longer Centrius or any other being; talking to him openly was her goal, but her conflict was solely her own, and against her own self. She pressed, bruising and scraping herself as she pushed harder than she thought psychologically safe for a sane person, bashing herself against the wall as she internally screamed her defiance, refusing to let a structure of her own doing dominate her.

Centrius finally relented and laid his hand on top of hers. When she looked up, no longer caring if he saw her cry, she found an almost pained expression on his face.

"I'm sorry…I truly am. It was wrong of me-"

"No," she muttered at him, refusing to let her own negativity affect the person trying to help her. "No. It was not. Please. I want to."

The two of them stared into each other's eyes as more tears fell, and she felt his hand slide off the top of hers to support it from underneath. "Okay," he whispered. For the first time he almost sounded afraid, as if he'd unearthed something private and sacred. It wasn't his fault, and she resolved to show him that he hadn't done anything wrong by helping her.

And…just like that…Sharimara flipped to the last photo in the roll.

In front of a small schoolhouse of similar blood elven design stood sat two figures. There was a stone wall about the height of a child in front of it, and Sharimara sat on top, dressed as a Sindorei civilian and looking as demure and pleasant as any other village mother. She was so happy…so free…so unaware. Truly under the impression that such a domestic life was for her.

Standing next to her but head reaching no higher was a child of not more than five or six years. The girl's eyes glowed a bright silver, and her features were almost entirely night elven – her one quarter Darkspear heritage was hard to discern aside from the face that she was a bit bigger than other Kaldorei children her age. But that deep indigo hair, the same exact shade her mother had been born with, marked the child as unmistakably Hearthglen.

Only when she remained quiet long enough for him to realize that she was waiting for a prompt did Centrius speak. "She's lovely," he whispered while inspecting the photo. "That's your hair there."

Sharimara took a deep breath. "That was her...Shania," she nearly gasped, finding the rock stealing her breath from her even after she'd fought back to her knees at the end of the battle inside her mind. Even when the defeat of that rock in her stomach, the subduing of those walls she'd constructed herself anyway, the anxiety caused as much damage to her psyche as it could on its way into oblivion, a spiteful reminder of the crutches she'd leaned on for so long.

More tears fell, and Sharimara even let a few gasps and sucking breaths of air echo in their little jungle as she forced herself to finally say it out loud. "That was my little girl," she whimpered.

When Centrius held her close, it actually didn't feel patronizing. She'd have like to believed that it wasn't absolutely necessary, but was welcome nonetheless. Empathizing so well once again that he could have read her mind, he kept his mouth shut as she took her time finishing, her words exiting her mouth in a combination of sobs, whimpers and halfway lucid speech.

"You know...I've been through so many conflicts in the past century. So many wars, so many skirmishes, so many fights in decrepit castles, haunted houses and seedy alleyways. I've been shot, beaten, jailed, and more...almost every bad thing that could happen, I survived, and most of the time I even took my revenge. Nothing kept me down...and if it ever did, I believed it would have to be big. Like another planetary invasion, or an old god devoting itself entirely to destroying only me specifically.

"But...but that wasn't it. No, that wasn't it. It was...so much simpler. I thought that if anything ever took Shania away from me, it would have to be...the mother of Sargeras himself, or a dimensional shambler, or a sentient black hole...something so evil, so incredible. And...that wasn't it. No. No. No. That wasn't it, no."

Sharimara began to choke on her own saliva, and Centrius massaged her upper back until she could spit it all out. The sobbing continued, but she didn't care. Even when she knew her words were as inarticulate as they always were, even when she worried some of it might be unintelligible due to her crying, she could no longer close the flood gates. What she had needed for so long was right in front of her, and the emotional rush was beyond her control.

"I...my second husband had gone to the store, I was alone. But with Shania. She and I were all alone, and we were with each other. She went outside because I was...no, she went outside, but I was in the kitchen, just, there. We had carrots...oh goddess, she was the only kid that actually liked carrots...she was so good...smart...she was so well behaved, I almost didn't believe she could have my genes. I let her...I let her...

"...I let her go outside. I didn't stop her...I didn't know! And she just went outside because she always went outside, there were never problems when she went outside, out, because it was supposed to be safe. The village life in the Ghostlands is safe; there are no monsters. And I was cutting the carrots and I just...I heard it. I heard. And I hear it now, again, she fell off the branch..."

Loud, unrestrained sobs echoed between the trees as Sharimara felt herself go limp. Centrius leaned over and hugged her, holding her close as she stained his smock with her tears. She pressed her face into his shoulder and wailed, muffling the sound against him as the pain she'd pretended wasn't there finally reminded her that she'd carried it along with her for the whole twenty someodd years. She clung to him, feeling all that energy she'd previously thought she possessed due to her racing heartbeat drained right out of her, and the walls and the rubble no longer even tried to drag her down; she'd fallen on her own, having always been to afraid to stop struggling before.

Denial no longer an option for her, she continued to talk into his shoulder even as she wailed. "I screamed so loud that all the neighbors came, and they rushed over. I passed out for a few seconds on my way over to her, only for a few seconds, but I still passed out and then woke up and crawled across all the leaves. The rock was right there under the branch...we were all so stupid, but everybody let their kids swing on that branch because...nobody got hurt. Nobody ever gets hurt they said, kids are just kids they said.

"And my husband...that piece of shit, that fucking sack of evil shit, he came back and...for ten goddess damned years I stuck by him! I worked fulltime while he went back to school, before we had Shania; I put up with his shrew of a mom; I was patient when he worked two shifts so we could build that house. Not once did I blame him for anything, that fucking piece of shit, that fuck! He looked right at me when the coroner came...oh, 'Shari, you should have been there! You shouldn't have let her play in a tree even though we'd been letting her do that every day for months before then!' That man who told me he loved me, who built that life with me...fuck! FUCK! Fuck it all, he told me that I'm the reason my little girl is gone!"

Hysterical sobs punctuated the end of the story, her nerves too shot but the tale ended beyond what else she could say. Her nasal passages constricted and she choked again as the saliva mixed with mucous in her throat. Ripping whatever cloth he could without ruining his smock, Centrius helped her to blow her nose and tossed the rag away, hugging her so tightly thereafter that she literally forgot where they were and what day it was. Her pained cries increased in volume for a moment before dying out into a whimper and then more sniffles, and nausea quieted her until only the heavy breathing of two people clinging to each other in the dark could be heard.

The fact that he'd become choked up as well grounded her, reminding her that she wasn't alone between the trees. This time when he gripped the back of her neck, there was a different sensation, a less carnal one, that drew her closer to him.

"I...don't have the words," Centrius whispered laboriously to her, working to retain his composure. "There's nothing I can say that won't come off as patronizing, other than...I'm sorry. I truly am. But Shari, you must believe that it was not your fault...not merely as a reaction to your worthless ex, but for yourself, internally within yourself, you must believe that there was nothing you could have done, no way you could have known."

"But...there are so many ways...it has nothing to do with what that asshole said, fuck him. I've prayed for Elune to make him die horribly so many times...but in myself...for the first few years, in between losing Shania and getting back into bounty hunting...I tried a few times. Maybe not enough, but I tried to reconcile what happened...and I can't. No matter how I try to look at it...I look back and I see the ways I could have prevented it from happening. The steps I could have taken...for sure, some of them were impossible for me to know. But if I claim there was no way at all...aren't I just lying to myself?"

She tilted her head up limply just barely enough to meet his eyes. His had started to tear up again as well, though his voice was much more controlled.

"How can a mortal answer that? How can we hope to gain such knowledge? All we can do is live...and to live, we have to believe that there's something bigger at play, whether it's benevolent or not, sentient or naturalistic...it's the only way. Shari, when I sent Gendo..."

He paused for a moment, not due to emotion overtaking him so much as a sense of self consciousness she hadn't thought possible for someone normally so confident. Her ears pricked up, and when he noticed how intently she'd begun staring at him, he continued. "When I sent my son, our neighbors actually discouraged me. But he was insistent...he felt the war between the Gurubashi and the Alliance was a just war, and it's what he wanted...everybody told me he wouldn't come back. And he didn't; he was hit by an Alliance mortar. And for so very long, I blamed myself...my daughter, Maha, even blamed me a little.

"And for a while, I let that belief destroy me. I let it fester. But I realized...there was no way for me to know. People go to war and survive; kids play on trees every single day. Life...can not stop just because we second guess every action we take, and force kids to live in bubbles because we worry about every possible way they could be hurt at any given time. That's not normal; what's normal is that most people live...some people die young. That will never stop happening. For those of us who aren't lucky...we just have to continue living. Life can not stop. I know Gendo wouldn't want that...and if you were the loving mother I truly feel you were, then I know that the love Shania sends back to you means she wouldn't want your life to end early just because hers did. Life isn't fair...but it has to go on."

Both of them continued to cry, but as she looked into his watery image, she felt that glimmer of hope. That's all it was; a mere talk wouldn't heal twenty years of a rotten, crippled heart forgetting how to properly feel anything anymore. But as much as she felt that instinctual notion that her daughter was more special than all other children, and that her love as a parent was somehow stronger than that of all parents who ever lived, she knew from logic that Centrius had suffered just like she had. He'd suffered, he was obviously still wounded, but he had dealt with it better than she had.

She pressed her forehead into his, closing her eyes as emotional devastation grew so exhausting that clinging to that glimmer of hope became the easiest choice, even if she was lying to herself.

He wrapped his big arms around her and they huddled together, forgetting about even the stars above and the waves below. Two hearts bled together as they both found that anchor, and even the dizziness couldn't drag her down anymore. The walls fell and left her exposed, but at least for one night, she was able to sit out in the open without fear driving her away. Green and silver light blended and mixed beneath the palm fronds, and words were no longer needed.


	9. Chapter 9

Sun broke into the little clearing in the clifftop jungle, tickling Sharimara's skin with its warmth. It was more of an annoyance rather than its regular welcome greeting in the morning due to the heat. Both the tropical climate as well as the temperature of Centrius' body already felt like just enough, and the morning sun wasn't exactly appreciated.

The two of them shifted in their spot in the grass, groaning in wordless complaint against the rude awakening. His arms were still around her when they woke up, though the feeling of his hide pressed against her back wasn't as awkward as it could have been due to how groggy both of them were.

Before she even opened her eyes, she turned her head toward the sky to speak. "It's so bright," she whined lightly while trying to stretch, though it was difficult when they were right next to each other.

On instinct, he pulled his smock off of them; they had used it as a blanket during the night, but it was no longer necessary to keep so warm after sunrise. Though both of them still wore their pants - and she'd never removed her blouse - there was still a shy, uneasy laugh shared between the two of them as if they'd done much more than they actually had.

The act of stretching and getting ready to return to the city in front of him was awkward. All she had to do was put her shoes on, and she even looked away shyly when he covered himself again. It felt cute, in a way; both of them were over a hundred years old, had been married and even brought children into the world, in addition to whatever shorter term relationships they'd been involved in. Yet there was a certain coy nature to the way the turned to each other after fully waking up that dispelled any illusions she'd held about their connection being solely platonic. Noises from the bay below carried up to them, breaking the sense of privacy despite the fact that only the birds knew they were there.

"Hey," she whispered while giving him a good morning hug. The awkwardness hadn't left, but when she looked over his shoulder instead of directly at him, it felt a bit easier.

"Hey," he whispered back, slightly awkward himself for a few seconds.

They tried to make small talk about the events of the day before, the brawl at the nightclub that had led to their daring escape, but even their light chatting was broken by the extremely loud sound of a foghorn down in the bay. Piercing the air and echoing across the walls of all the cliffs surrounding the city, it was inescapable, and they even found themselves covering their ears until it had finished.

Far ahead of them and downward, a Steamwheedle passenger ship with a 'no passengers' sign on it began to puff smoke. It had been docked since the day before, but in the rush of the good time she'd had after he showed up, she hadn't even noticed its presence. A Forsaken flag flew next to the Steamwheedle one, and already Sharimara could spy the hobgoblins loading luggage while undead skeletal guards stood watch next to the bruisers.

"They've started loading," she sighed while peeking in between the trees.

He turned as well, and a sad silence passed. "It will still take them more than half an hour to finish it all. We should get going...but we have some time."

Sharimara looked up at him and didn't bother hiding her frown. "I guess that leaves us time for breakfast? A last meal before we go to meet our ends?" she asked. The forced attempt at a resigned laugh came off as sarcastic and cynical, and she felt disappointed at the sound.

Undaunted, he continued to look down at her with unhidden sadness. A creeping sense of dread clung to her back even as the way he gazed upon her so freely warmed her. "A slow walk and a good meal, with a good last chat as well. The morning will be as pleasant as we make it."

In an odd way she'd find difficult to describe, she felt her lips curl into a smile on one side and a frown on the other. "You're right...it's hard, but you're right," she replied more in resignation than true defeat. "We're still here, we're still in good condition, we still have what we need. Let's make the most of it."

He turned away and looked due north at the descending cliffsides that dropped into the tin and brick slums overlooking the wooden plank levels below. "We can go through there...that dwarven place should be serving breakfast about now, and it isn't far from where you need tone."

Denial having been cast aside the night before, she felt the wind taken right out of her, as if a mountain giant had punched her in the gut. "I know...I know. It's time."

Dragging their feet, the two of them descended from the grassy cliffs and dropped into the slums, stepping around the crowds of unemployed goblin youth and other locals. Not tension but depression silenced them, and there were no enlightening conversations or bits of their pasta shared back and forth. Neither Sharimara nor Centrius said a word as they walked arm in arm like the day before, but without the irreverent spring in their steps. The unpainted, rudimentary structures matched their blue mood as the two of them walked through the mostly unpaved streets.

Though they were both well rested, she felt another form of exhaustion infect her. It wasn't due to the first confession of the hurt she'd carried so long; on the contrary, there was a small measure of freedom she felt she'd gained, even if the depth of the internal scar would remain for quite some time. There was something else, something more inevitable and unavoidable, that was stinging her so much. Despite the intensity with which she felt it, she was unable to articulate it, and felt her jaw muscles tighten the few times she did try to speak up before they'd moved away from prying eyes and ears. It wasn't until they'd descended to the top level of wooden planks crowded with packed wooden cabins that he spoke.

"Shari...I know you'll be behind enemy lines, but will the civilian services for Steamwheedle accept mail? Is there a place I could write to?"

Her pace slowed down, and his with it since their arms were still comfortably locked. "There won't be any civilian services in the Grizzly Hills. All supplies will be purchased from cartel owned companies in a circle of corrupt contracts and then shipped in by boat; everything will be distributed by the cartel's private mercenary army. Everyone there will either be a contract officer or a fighter, even those of us distributing rations."

He hummed low in his throat, keeping his tone surprinsgly controlled though she did feel his fingers tremble for a few seconds upon hearing her answer. "Radio silence...there will be no access, then," he said, sounding even more disappointed than her. "What about other organizations? Is anybody shipping or flying mail in there?"

"N-no...of there was a way, I'd know, and I'd have told you. The Heavenly Guard shot every zeppelin and even dragon out of the sky until all flights stopped. They littered the southern coastline of the whole continent with naval mines - military ships still sail, but nothing else. No faction will take the risk."

"I see..." he signed, his head hung low.

Feeling contrite, she pulled herself a little closer to him. "What about Outland?" she asked with eyes full of hope. "The Dark Portal will be closed, but surely some military personnel must be carrying letters."

"Yes," he said while shaking his head in contrast. "But I only know that I'll be on the Hellfire Peninsula. Beyond that, I have no idea where I'll be or if they'll even assign me to a specific place, or leave me free to roam. I'm an independent contractor, not with an organization - nobody represents or advocates for me."

"What organizations are going? Neither of us have anything to do with the factions, but are you a member of the Explorer's League?"

"Not since I left, no...but they no longer have any presence there anyway. Just groups like the Kirin Tor, Earthen Ring...but I have no relation with them. The best bet..." His voice trailed off as he tried hard to think. "My mother never kept in touch with the Sentinels, which is why I'm not mentioned in any Kaldorei genealogies or archives, as you found...I can try to contact the single Sentinel Mission there, and register myself. It's a long shot because I don't know where it is, but writing a letter addressed to Centrius Nightshade and sending it with them is your only bet. That's assuming that you're still alive to write one after fourteen months, and that I'm still alive if, by chance, such a letter makes its way through the Portal."

That familiar sense of panic rose up inside Sharimara again; now that her emotional barriers had been at least temporarily lowered, she was no longer able to simply bury her feelings, and it showed in her almost frantic tone of voice. "Your daughter...Maha. Where was she the last time you were in contact with her?"

"She and her husband had been living in Cenarion Hold in Silithus, but that was decades ago. I showed up for Winter Veil as I always had and found them gone." His eyes lit up momentarily and he patted her arm with his free hand. "Your siblings...they were in Ratchet the last time you saw them, right?"

She grimaced. "The Hearthglen family was, but many of them left. Three of my siblings had moved away for sure, one of them was constantly away on business. One of them had remained but there's no telling if that lasted because of how wild he was...it's just been too long since I've been. I don't know them anymore."

"Okay...okay...okay," he murmured, repeating himself like she sometimes did.

The way he sounded so let down killed her inside. He'd done so much to help her, yet she felt like she hadn't been able to help him. All she'd done was tracked him down, stalked him, gotten him attached to her and used his help with her own unresolved parenthood issues. Guilt ran in her family, but she thought she'd left that characteristic behind along with her relationship with all of them; she was wrong, and the feeling that Centrius would have been better if she hadn't reached out to him crushed her.

Desperately trying to say anything to lift their spirits, she sought any solution, no matter how far flung. "If I survive this war in Northrend...if I make it, my first trip will be to Cenarion Hold to ask about Maha. I promise I'll do my best there, and then I'll try to gather up the courage to face my oldest brother again if he's still in Ratchet. It might take time, but I'll try to collect any information I can. It helped me find you this time."

Unconvinced judging by the tone of his voice, but warmed by her attempt, he flashed a sad smile as the two of them walked. "Me too. I don't know how long I'll be stuck there, but if I survive, those will be my destinations as well."

Throngs of people passed by them as they strolled along the same planks where they'd window shopped the day before. The cramped twists and turns of Booty Bay were familiar to them, but the joy she'd felt when squeezing onto his arm and criticizing home decor items she'd never need to buy was entirely absent. In that joy's stead were thoughts of sleeping in the frigid wastes of the Grizzly Hills, drinking melted snow and sucking the marrow out of bones for sustenance. Just another paycheck in a series of quests in a profession which she was addicted to, and which simply dominated her life no matter how many times she tried to find a way out.

Centrius slowed down nearly to a stop and pulled her away from the center of the plank where travelers and local workers continued to run in their rat race, living normal lives in a world that was only safe because of the personal sacrifices of people like them.

"Shari, take a look at that!" he practically crooned in delight while pointing toward an odd booth with a curtain in front of it. It was tucked away in a corner, against the cliff face and in the darkest reaches beneath the top level of planks.

After a few seconds of squinting, she realized what it was. "Oh...it's a photo booth! A machine that produces photographs near instantaneously! I've heard of those!" She turned and found herself nearly nose to nose with him, and despite the lingering pain, she did feel a bit uplifted. "Can we both fit?"

"No matter what, we'll find a way to do so. After all...these could be our final photos."

Despite their mood, she found the strength to smile. "Everything we do now could be our final everything," she chuckled. "Let's do it."

The two of them approached the booth and began inspecting the outside of it. There was a series of wires all hooked up to a vat of molasses and kerosene with an arcane crystal hovering over it. Using a trick she'd learned while busting a money laundering racket at the Exodar, Sharimara used the feedback created between the wires and the crystal itself to set off some sparks and start a small fire on a portion of the mostly motionless and partially gelatinated kerosene. An electric hum similar to that of the totem enchanted door atop the nightclub from the previous evening sang from the inside of the booth's compartments, and the old contraption vibrated as if it hadn't been operated in a very long time. Eventually a spotlight from the camera lens inside began to shine, and they raced against each other to pay.

"I got it," Centrius said while fishing in his pockets.

"No, it's alright," Sharimara replied when she whipped her thin wallet out again.

"No, it's okay."

"Yes, it's okay Cent, I got this."

"Allow me," he replied in a nonchalant voice as if they weren't actually arguing about who could pay. The causal poker face he used, as if he was ignoring what she'd said, annoyed her in the sort of endearing way that made her smile despite trying not to smile.

"I said, I'll pay, so I'm going to pay." She quickly began shoving silver coins into the slot on the side of the booth before noticing the price. "Three gold? For photos?"

"All the more reason to pay together!" he chortled while putting an entire gold coin into the slot.

"Hey! Hey! I'm paying!" She tried to push him away as she entered the last silver coins that added up to the total, but she wasn't quite strong enough to move him. He didn't react aside from his muffled laugh, and instead waited patiently for her to finish operating the machine.

A click and a whir sounded off from inside, and there was the faint noise of an old, weak timer ticking away. The two of them looked at each other and then at the small space inside; it couldn't have been designed for anybody larger than an orc, and they were quite a bit larger than that. Examining the space behind the curtain was like trying to decipher some sort of mathematical equation, and Sharimara almost found herself jumping inside at the sound of the timer before she figured out a possible solution to the puzzle.

"Cent...I think you need to, like...you sit down facing the camera, and let your knees stick out both sides."

"Like I'm straddling the front part of the booth, basically?"

"Yeah. And then lean back as much as you can and I'll sit across you."

For a second, he looked skeptical, but the timer continued to tick away. "Alright, let's do it," he said while stepping one long leg through.

He nearly bumped his head while trying to duck inside, and she slipped her hand between him and the roof of the booth lest he hurt himself. Once inside, he stuck both knees out to the sides and held on to the roof with both hands in order to free up enough space for her. The first piece of the puzzle had fallen into place rather easily, though that left her confused as to what she would do.

The opposite side of the booth was wedged against the wall of another shop, and there wouldn't be enough room for both of their lets. Instead of trying to straddle the booth the way he was, she turned around and bent over as if doing a squat. The material of her jeans creaked and she peeked behind her if he was checking out her butt, but (a bit to her chagrin) he was behaving like a gentleman and trying not to look. She almost fell backward when ducking to avoid hitting her head, but he caught her in his one arm and she ended up sprawled across his lap like a lumberjack's wife. Both her legs stuck out the one side of the booth, and from the other side of the curtain it probably seemed like something inappropriate was going on.

Inside, the two of them waited as the timer for the camera dragged on for far too long. There was a reflective screen directly below it, providing them a dimly lit view of themselves as they tried to relax as much as they could in the cramped space. Scooting further over on his lap, she was able to lean toward the wall of the shop next door and throw an arm around his neck. It helped to stabalize her quite a bit, not to mention the feeling helped her to relax.

Humming in his throat again, he caused his chest to lightly vibrate against the side of hers, distracting and slightly arousing her again. Perhaps it really had been a long time since he'd been on a relationship, because he didn't seem to notice the effect as he gazed upon their reflection.

"This photo could be the last memory of Azeroth I can take with me," he said wistfully. There was a sound of forced calmness there which didn't fit his personality at all, and it was enough for her to turn her head to look at him directly.

For once, he was the one avoiding her gaze as he honed his vision on the camera screen. His very mixed looking features were totally controlled, stoic and pleasant as always, but his eyes spoke differently. They didn't glisten or twitch, but there was a sort of shine to them that told her of a sense of inevitability that hurt him. Not inevitable doom while on Outland, but more for the loss of something he cared for. Despite the fact that they hadn't spent much time together, she felt the same way, and she knew the connection had grown based on how much they had in common. She wondered if he had looked like this on the nights before his late wife's death, watching her sleep and knowing her shorter lifespan was catching up with her.

Why am I wondering about this, she though to herself. This wasn't a time to look sad; what he'd said was absolutely true.

"This photo might be the last memory of life as I know it I can take with me," she replied, surprising herself at the false confidence she heard in her own tone of voice. "Let's make it count."

Still focused forward, Centrius hugged her closer and squeezed her knee with his free hand. The sense of warmth was finally intense after her time spent with him had been so carefree, and she found that she didn't mind. "Let's," he whispered.

The timer on the clock stopped ticking, and the camera whirred while the lens rotated. In a flash, Sharimara focused her thoughts on the time she'd spent there. On the way she lived like a normal person at least for one day, on the sensation of his scent when he held her close, on the way she had to stand on the tips of her toes when she hugged him, on the way that she felt so open and free when they were together. For those few seconds when the camera rolled, her past melted away and her future seemed so far off. The present grounded her, and all that existed in the world was that little booth and the two of them hidden behind a curtain, hugging each other and smiling as the camera flashed.

The flashes weren't particularly bright, and after only a few seconds it was over. The whirring slowed down and shifted to a different part of the contraption, and a thick roll of some material began to turn. Mechanical parts clicked until the sound of glossy paper thunked against a metal dish outside, and all sounds inside the machine stopped. It was over.

For a few moments, the two of them sat together in silence. A strong urge to just rest her head on top of his and stay there all morning struck her, and it was a battle to remain sitting upright on his lap. He made no move to leave to push her off of him, and she knew that she'd have to be the one to break away.

"We should check our photos," she sighed. She slipped her hand on top of his, and she could feel it twitch on her knee just a hair when she did.

"Right...of course, right. Just watch your head - the ceiling in here is awfully low."

Exiting as carefully as they'd entered, the two of them stood outside the booth and adjusted their clothing. At a snail's pace, Centrius reached down and scooped up the reel of small photos, smiling down at them and leaning over toward her.

"They came out great," he said, with a calmness that was a bit more genuine this time.

"Let me see..."

In all four photos, they'd held roughly the same pose. The scope of the camera was just enough to catch them both from the chest up, and only the tip of one of her ears was missing from the shot. The color was nice and glossy, and the steep price made a little more sense given the quality.

What caught her eye the most, however, was that she truly looked happy. Her smile was more than just a token flash of white fangs, as she'd done in so many other pictures. The light in her eyes, the content expression on her face, the way she looked so relaxed as they held each other...her ears drooped as she looked at the pictures, and the realization that she hadn't felt like that in so long hit her hard.

"They're perfect...in every way," she sighed through a true but sad smile.

He snorted through his nose humorously. "I'm not sure which ones I want to pick...they're all so different."

"Ha! Here, it's easy to pull them apart." Carefully tearing the edges, she created two pairs for each of them, and made a show of letting him pick which pair he wanted.

Worried that looking at them too much longer would cause her to become weepy, she quickly pulled out her wallet and the roll of photos already in there. Two empty slots after the photograph of her and little Shania were perfect fits, and after a second the entire roll was back in her wallet and thus, her pocket.

He'd already put his straight into his pocket, not having a wallet since everything he owned had been stored by the hotel where he had no room. Empty handed, the two of them turned to look at each other awkwardly. Once again, nothing raunchy had gone on, and yet there was a sense of being exposed as they stood in one of the few empty, quiet corners of Booty Bay. No longer left with anything holding them back, the two of them seemed at a loss as to what to do or say.

Taking the initiative, he reached forward and laid his hand on her shoulder again as he'd done before. That firm grip felt so welcoming, so enticing, that she took a few steps forward without being told. She wanted to feel that touch so badly, so hold on to that closeness and not let go. Even if they hadn't spent a long time together, even if they'd both already lived for so long before meeting each other, she felt like she knew him better than anyone except for her siblings - who no longer knew if she was even alive or not. Centrius was the only person who truly knew; even people like Stickshift were just names on lists at contractor offices who appeared more often than others.

She licked her lips in anticipation, but didn't know of what. What was to be said at such a moment?

"Cent...I-"

Another loud, piercing horn broke the air as the Steamwheedle ship sounded its signal. The goblin voice over an intercom echoed off every level of the city.

"First call for all military personnel. The ship to Northrend will begin boarding now."


	10. Chapter 10

Sharimara's glowing green eyes stared up at Centrius, meeting his bright silvers as they stood open mouthed. The horn signaling that her ship had begun boarding came earlier than either of them expected...had half an hour truly passed already?

"That's...that's my ship," she said in confusion, too shocked for the depression to hit her immediately.

He furrowed his brown in a similar sense of confusion, though it soon passed. "I...I didn't think it was time," he replied, sounding rather contrite as if it was his fault.

"I guess they figured they'd start boarding early. Which is...I guess that's professional of them," she sighed. Her emotional walls still broken and unrepaired, she openly pouted without fear of how he'd react. "I knew my vacation was only one day, but...I didn't think it would be over so fast. It was...how is it time now?"

He frowned as well, having possessed no such walls to begin with. "Time flies so quickly...even for beings such as ourselves. Even if we'll live for a full five centuries, the time will go by as fast in our eyes as the time of these poor, short lived goblins. A day will be gone even faster." His eyes downcast, he loosened his grip on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Shari. I suppose that isn't helping."

"No, it is. We don't want to commit the mistake of thinking we'll live forever, as some people from our moms' generations did. The reminder helps." She reached up and gave his bicep a squeeze. "And it was such a good time. It was short, and I wish it weren't over...but I haven't had this much fun in years. And I'm not just saying that as an empty expression."

"Me neither...I really enjoyed this weekend. So much." This time when he smiled, any sense of fakeness was absent, and the full extent of that melancholy resignation shone through. "I suppose you don't mind if I walk you to your ship."

She laughed out loud at the prospect. "Mind? I'll be furious if you don't," she chortled. Reaching down to grip his hand, she gave him a little tug to follow. "Come."

Her hands were by no means dainty; like him, she bore five digits on each limb like an elf but the relatively wide wrists and ankles of a troll. Regardless, his hand could enclose hers almost entirely, and she left aside her natural inclination to always be in control and let her wrist lie limp. The two of them walked that way through the crowds, shambling downward on the ramps leading to the bottom level of the city on planks and toward the point of their inevitable goodbye.

As the bottom level approached, Sharimara could feel the weight of her shoes increasing. Turning to lead and sinking her down into the wooden ramp, she felt as if they would drag her straight through and down to the bottom of the sea. On a few occasions, she kicked her feet out as if she'd accidentally stepped on a tin can or a box, only to realize that there was nothing in her way. No wind blew and yet she felt some force pushing her back, and the crowd that was parting around the two big people with glowing eyes somehow felt like a river buffeting her back.

He squeezed her hand and she realized that her tension had become apparent to him. They leaned close until their arms were resting against each other, and she huddled closely to him as if trying to hide. "Cent..."

"Yes, Shari?"

"Your daughter's surname name is the same as yours, right?"

"Nightshade, that's right." As if understanding her point, he began speaking in a tone that sounded rushed for him, trying to offer as much information as he could in their last moments together. "Her husband is over a thousand years old - from the generation of night elves born at the War of the Shifting Sands. His family has no surname, but his first name is Zendithir. Born there in Cenarion Hold."

"And they train nightsabres?"

"Trained. Past tense. I have no idea what they're doing now, but...well, since they tied the knot, he took the surname Nightshade; Maha follows the customs of my mom's people, so the woman heads the household."

"As she should," Sharimara found the presence of mind to laugh despite her aching heart.

The two of them continued down the last ramp, reaching the bottom level of Booty Bay and facing a vast expanse of trade shops and shipping offices, along with throngs of sailors and dock workers blocking their path. She liked and disliked it. Liked it because it slowed them down enough to give her a few more minutes with him. Disliked it because it only prolonged her suffering.

Every time she inhaled, her heart hurt physically. Her temples began to heat up, but not in the pleasant way they had when they'd laid alone together in the jungle. She heard the muscle in her jaw strain, only piling on more sources of physical tension along with the mental ones, and each step became a laborious chore. Weird aches and pains she logically knew weren't real tore at her, trying to give her reasons to just stop walking right then and there.

Before her chest cavity could become even more restricted, she tried to keep talking to distract herself. "I'll do my best to find them," she huffed, stifling a shuddering breath afterward. "And I'll check every book of genealogy for updates, in case you or her manage to add yourselves."

"And I'll try to contact the Sentinels once I'm on Outland," he replied, speaking in just a subdued a tone as her. That emotional sting apparent in his voice killed her, battered her as she realized she was the cause. "Shari...your brother. The one that might still be in Ratchet."

"Navarion, and his wife is named Astariel," she replied, "assuming they're still happy and together. But anybody named Hearthglen is my kin - the surname is part of the alias my mom invented, so only my direct relatives use it. If you can find anyone with that last name, you've found someone from my extended family members - I've just been too much of a coward to track them down myself."

"Don't say that," he whispered weakly, obviously on the verge of tears again must like her.

The crowd parted for them again, and the Steamwheedle ship came into view. The local bruisers continued to watch the porters alongside the Forsaken deathguards, inspecting each piece of cargo and luggage as it was all loaded. Sharimara and Centrius were less than a hundred yards away down the dock, passing a series of hostels and storage for rent as they traversed the last expanse of the pier that marked the end of their time together.

Her nose began to run and she sniffled openly a few times, not knowing and no longer caring if any of the strangers they passed noticed. The muscles next to her eyes began to creak and twitch nervously, and pressure mounted behind them as she struggled to contain herself. "There are my bags," she said while limply indicating a team of goblins carrying her belongings to a door on the ship's upper deck that lead toward the vessel's sleeping quarters.

Centrius breathed in and out deeply, his voice shuddering as he did so in a way that was less stifled than hers. "You're all set then...once you're off, I'll check if the hotel has a room ready for me and it's just a few more days here before I leave, too. We're both...heading out."

"Out and about," she mumbled, feeling stupid at her own comment but not knowing what else to say to preserve her dignity as the first set of tears rolled down her cheeks. "Thank you, Cent...for everything. For...helping me...to talk. Because, if I hadn't found you...I wouldn't...I wouldn't have dealt with my loss properly."

He sniffled too, and from the corner of her eye she could see that he'd also begun to weep. "I...you too," was all he could manage to say. After having remained so smooth, so confident, and so collected the entire time, he finally lost his nerve like she had done, letting that strength she'd admired in him so much slip.

Her pace slowed down until she felt him tug her forward and then stop, the constriction in her throat simply too great. Hyperventilating, she fanned herself for air and tried to pull him into an alleyway between two shipping offices, the narrow wooden passage groaning as he followed her. She pulled away from him, trying to hide her face as he fought to pull her back to him.

Blaming herself for it all, she felt herself break down, no longer able to see him in such a state. "Cent!" she gasped as he took her by the arms and faced her, concealed from the passersby by the stacked crates and barrels in the alley. "I'm s-s-s-sorry!"

She buried her face into his shirt again, crying out loud as they clung to each other. Even more so than the confession of her lost child the night before, her choked sobs were desperate and distraught, all of her walls destroyed by her own hand, robbing her of any place to run to or hide in. His body shook along with hers, and she could have sworn she even heard the sound of his sobbing for the first time.

"Don't! Goddes, don't be sorry! This was the best weekend-"

"No, no, that's not it!" she cried. "Look at you! You didn't need me! You didn't need help the way I did, you got nothing out of knowing me except for a leech!"

"Shari, come on, don't let it end like this. I haven't felt this happy around anyone for a very long time, you have nothing to apologize for!"

"You don't understand, Cent! I...Cent...I didn't search for you for just three months like I claimed." Beyond the point of hiding the truth anymore, she looked up into those two understanding silver eyes. "I spent three years searching for the missing son of Serenity...I dogged you for years all because my loneliness drove me to grasp for something, anything that I thought might understand me-"

"And I'm glad you did, so why on Azeroth would you apologize!"

"Because you didn't ask for that!" she shrieked. "You didn't want it or need it...I'm just a selfish parasite, and now I've transferred my pain onto you! You wouldn't be crying right now if it weren't for me!"

"Did you learn nothing, Shari?" he asked while running his hand over her hair to smooth it down. "We can't pretend that it's possible to go through life without pain. I'm hurt...I'm devastated to let you go now...but I'm hurt because this was the most amazing weekend I can remember having in so very long. That sorrow is so great because the joy was even greater. And if I'd known the moment I found you stuck in my snare back in Dustwallow that letting you go would hurt this much, I wouldn't have changed a thing."

He cupped her cheek and pulled her closer to him, somehow drawing strength from the baring of his soul in front of her rather than from closing himself off behind walls and pretending he didn't feel.

"This is life; we can't change the world we live in. You're being shipped to the middle of the worst war zone on the planet, and I'm being sealed away in the midst of a pandemic on another. We both have to go; we're both homeless, without family support and in possession only of our professional reputations. This is real life; this is how it is.

"But as long as I live...as long as my heart still beats, I will not forget you. Don't ever regret tracking me down, because I don't regret having been found. It hurts so bad to part ways, but I don't regret a thing. Whenever I lay awake at night, whenever I stop to rest on a long march, whenever I find myself able to take a moment's rest...I will remember. And if I make it off that other planet alive...if I can come back and start over...I'll try my best to find you. I don't know how, and I can't promise what our situation will be like if we ever meet again, but I swear that I'll try. I'll find you...and then, whatever the goddess wills to happen will happen."

Too brief but a much appreciated effort, his monologue at least helped her to stop hyperventilating. Nodding in affirmation that she'd heard him, her mind raced faster than her heart and she couldn't even fully process all that he'd said. "Me too," spilled from her lips before the foghorn of the ship sounded off again, signaling that the ship would be leaving ahead of schedule.

"Last call for boarding! All luggage has been loaded!"

Tears flowing freely, the two of them were unable to lock eyes again as they had so many times before. Seeking that closeness one last time, Sharimara wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her head against his chest, listening to his accelerated pulse beat against her ear. Weakened and frazzled nerves made leaving the alleyway shockingly easy, and she didn't resist as he solemnly led her toward her point of departure. Whether due to respect or because they were all too busy to notice, the other passengers as well as the workers took no notice of the odd weeping couple at the edge of the pier.

Thankfully, the person in charge of checking ID at the entrance ramp to the ship was a morose looking undead gnome who didn't appear at all concerned with whatever was bothering the two of them. Her personal quarters checked off as occupied and her belongings aboard, Sharimara had nothing more to do except to turn to Centrius, crestfallen as they stood a few feet apart. His feet weren't far from hers, but they were still on the pier, and hers on the entry ramp for the boat; it felt like there were miles between them.

"Thank you, Shari," he whispered just loud enough for their pairs of long ears to hear.

The defeat in his voice spoke more than the words, and she began to hate herself when she proved too weak to meet his gaze one last time. One last nod served, as it had a few times before, as her only form of communication until a bruiser ushered her up into the deck. She lingered near the railing of the stern of the ship as they cast off, hanging behind after all the passengers and most of the crew had already gone below the deck.

Far too quickly, the anchor was pulled up from the bottom of the bay. Far too quickly, the motor began to rumble and the propeller underneath kicked up waves. Far too quickly, the distance between her and him increased in real terms. And far too quickly, the sense of finality at the end of the time they'd shared pressed down onto her like an avalanche.

Frozen in place, Centrius continued to watch her, holding on for as long was possible. Inch by inch and then foot by foot, Booty Bay shrank away from her, gradually turning into a dot on the horizon at the same time that she felt her hope for a different life shrink away under the burning reality of how the world actually functioned.

Heart pounding, mind racing, pain agonizing, she felt her heart break for a man she'd spent a single day and night with. Maybe after time passed, she could look back and mock her foolish sentimentality to the point that she shamed herself into no longer feeling anything at all, as was her condition before she'd met him. In the thick of battle, the reminder of her morality might bleed that heartache right out of her and teach her a hard lesson about letting herself get attached to someone.

Attached...how stupid had she been? How delusional? For how could she, a bounty huntress living on the move and floating through life anonymously, ever think she could be happy one day? She'd tried twice before; she'd failed. This was no different.

Crying alone over the railing, she watched the last portion of Stranglethorn Vale disappear as she tried to exorcise the last bit of emotion from her being, calling out to the wind one last time.

"Thank you too, Cent...thank you for everything.

"Thank you for being there...for listening...for understanding. Thank you...more than anyone I've ever said this to, thank you."

The last portion of land disappeared over the horizon, and with it any hope she might have had of ever seeing him again. She was an idiot. A moron. A mentally deficient cave woman trying to live a fantasy that she was far too old to believe in. She'd sought him out and led to her attachment developing at such a high speed; she'd brought every ounce of anguish onto herself.

"I don't know how much time Elune has given me...I don't know where I will end up. But as long as I live..." She paused to suck in air, letting out a whimper as she forced herself to speak her final goodbye. Even if he couldn't hear it, she knew this was the only chance she'd have to let it all out; for once she'd spent a good few days at sea crying herself to sleep, her walls would rise up again. "As long as I live, I will remember our time. I will remember our sorrow, and our joy...I will remember the help that you freely gave to me."

By some miracle, the passengers and crew alike remained below in the bowels of the ship, leaving her alone to her misery. That freedom would be the last she'd taste; of that, she was sure. For soon enough, she'd be back where she belonged, in the middle of conflict. She'd need to be closed off again. These were her last glimpses of freedom before returning to her self made prison.

"I swear by the goddess and all that is holy, I won't forget what we shared, Cent...and I will never forget you."

Open ocean met her words, churning beneath the mid morning sun. Yellow light shimmered, but the light couldn't blind her at first due to all the tears. Crying until she could literally cry no more, she let go, resigning herself to her situation. Maybe in another life...there would be another way. She buried that hope deep down, too wounded to let it go entirely but too trapped to indulge in it consciously. One day...one day, she thought, maybe she could dig it up again. And until then, buried deep within the confines of her closed off heart it would remain.

"Never."

The end

of the story "Connection."

The beginning

of a connection spanning centuries.

"Reconnection," the sequel to the thread of Sharimara and Centrius, is the sixth of the seven volumes in the Saga of Sharimara; this was the third. It has already been written and edited, and should be posted around month.

Until then, we have two more stories in between...patience pays. I'm not done with them yet.

Up next is "Countdown to Extinction," which I will start posting either next week or the immediate week thereafter, followed by "Entropy." If you choose to read on, then be ready.

If not, then I hope this moved you in some way. It's a writer's job to cause emotional reactions in readers...those reactions will not always be cheery. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for reading a tale which was very stressful for me to write, but it had to be told. Sometimes, realism must trump fantasy...sometimes.


End file.
